I’m prepared to predict, even two weeks before it’s over, that summer 2026 will end up as England’s hottest on record.

Central England Temperature (CET, data available here) records the average temperature over a large region of central England, starting on January 1st, 1772, and includes both daily high and overnight low temperatures since 1878. What does it have to say about summer heat? Here’s the summer average (June/July/August) for daily high temperature:

The upward trend recently is plainly evident. The final value, for 2026, is hottest of all, but will change as new data arrive. When “the smoke clears” it is overwhelmingly likely it will still exceed any previous year.

Perhaps a better indicator of how hot the summer has been, is based on a “heat wave index,” the cumulative number of degrees in excess of a threshold throughout the year. For CET, I used a threshold of 26.4 °C (79.52 °F). Here’s the number of days over threshold for each year since 1878:

This year has already seen more hot days than any other, breaking the existing record (set in 1976), and the number can only increase as the year continues. The cumulative degrees over threshold looks like this:

This year has already seen more excess degrees than any other, breaking the existing record (set in 1976), and the lead can only increase.

I will point out that this year has not seen the hottest single day on record, that was back in 2022. Here’s the hottest daily temperature for each year:

The current year is only 2nd on the list; it might exceed the 2022 value before the year is out, but I doubt it.

I’m really not going out on a limb with my prediction. It’s far from controversial that 2026 is England’s hottest year on record, in fact it’s rather obvious. But not to everybody.

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