LONDON
\nBritain broke its record on Monday for the hottest day in May, according to the national weather agency, with the mercury rising to 33.5C near London as the country baked in a sweltering heatwave. The previous hottest May day saw 32.8C heat, first registered in 1922 and again in 1944.
\nIt is just the latest temperature record to tumble in the UK, which saw its hottest year on the books in 2025, with scientists warning that the country is unprepared for the ever-more frequent heatwaves driven by man-made climate change.
\nThe Met Office had earlier forecast highs of 35C, after heatwave conditions spread to parts of southeast England and London by Sunday night. \u201cTemperatures at Heathrow have recently reached 33.5C, provisionally beating the all-time May record,\u201d the Met Office wrote on social media.
\n\u201cRecords are usually only broken by tenths of a degree \u2014 making this heatwave unprecedented for the time of year,\u201d the weather agency added earlier. Monday is also expected to be the hottest bank holiday ever.
\n\u201cWe rarely see temperatures above 35C, even in the summer months, so to see temperatures getting close to 35C in May is, as I say, pretty historic,\u201d Met Office meteorologist Tom Morgan told the domestic Press Association news agency.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s nice to have it, but it is much, much hotter than it should be in the UK,\u201d Andrea Quaine, a 41-year-old mother, told AFP in London as temperatures exceeded 30C on Sunday.
\n\u201cI am worried about it because it obviously shows that global warming is happening,\u201d she added.
\n\u201cThe weather here, it\u2019s like a mini version of hell. It\u2019s boiling. It\u2019s like really hot. The sunscreen, it will protect me, but it\u2019s really hot,\u201d said 10-year-old Liza Nizari, who was visiting London from Manchester in the northwest.
\nScientists say human-induced climate change is making extreme weather events like heatwaves, droughts and floods more intense, resulting in temperature records being broken more frequently.
\nClimate advisers last week warned the UK government that the country was \u201cbuilt for a climate that no longer exists\u201d and urged it to adapt infrastructure like schools and hospitals for a warming planet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
LONDON Britain broke its record on Monday for the hottest day in May, according to the national weather agency, with the mercury rising to 33.5C near London as the country baked in a sweltering heatwave. The previous hottest May day saw 32.8C heat, first registered in 1922 and again in 1944. It is just the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":548394,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-548362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world"],"yoast_head":"\n