Multiple factors will play a lot in how the temperatures will be like, record breaking or not. One such factor is thickness. It was the thickness that gave the one day wonder of 1 July 2015 with a maxima of 36.7°C. This was hotter than ANY day of Summer 1976 as a reminder. This one day wonder or mini heatwave in late June/early July 2015 is what I'm going to discuss here in this post.
This mini heatwave was very impressive for the UK - not much so for Ireland.
The UKMO fax chart below from 30 June 2015 shows a 1023mb area of high pressure building to the east of the UK into central Europe and up to Scandinavia with a cold front just out to the west of Ireland. The winds are going anticlockwise around this front from a southerly with air being pumped up from Iberia.
If you notice to the north of Europe, there is northern blocking which would indicate how Summer 2015 was going to go down after this Spanish plume/mini heatwave.
850hPa temperatures were already surpassing 15°C to the south of England on 30 June. Heathrow reached a maximum temperature of 32.5°C which made it the warmest June day in the UK since 2011. Glasnevin, Co. Dublin got up to 26.1°C in abundant sunshine (the highest June temperature in Ireland at this time since 2010) but this was to become the highest temperature of the entire year in Ireland making it the lowest annual maximum temperature since 2011. Phoenix Park reached a maximum of 25.6°C on the same day. Many western regions barely even reached 20c though close to the front. Belmullet's maximum of June 2015 for instance was only 18.3°C on the 29th.
The pattern continued into the 1st July 2015 but the front was further in over Ireland and it was even hotter in the UK than the previous day. The temperature at Heathrow was 32.5°C at 09:00 GMT and 34.1°C at 1000 GMT, before falling back to 31.5°C by 11:00 GMT. The maximum of 36.7°C was recorded at 14:13 GMT. The Heathrow figure for 09:00 GMT made it the highest night-time temperature on record in the UK (2100 to 0900 GMT). The 36.7°C figure made it the highest July temperature on record for the UK beating the previous record of 36.5°C on 19th July 2006. It was also the highest temperature overall in the UK since August 2003. It was reported that 40°C was recorded in Lincolnshire in July 1808 but due to how far back this was, this is disregarded as an official temperature. Castleconnell, Co. Limerick recorded 25.6°C on July 1st for Ireland.
Satellite for 10:53 GMT on 1st July 2015.
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