England on Tuesday recorded temperatures exceeding 40C (104F) for the first time on record, the Met Office said.
According to provisional figures, temperatures at a number of areas in England passed 40C by 4 p.m., with 40.3C recorded at Coningsby, 40.2C at St. James’s Park, 40.2C at Heathrow, 40.1C at Kew Gardens, and 40C at Northolt.
Cambridge, which holds the previous record of 38.7C, recorded in July 2019, saw the mercury rising to 39.9 on Tuesday.
The temperature needs to be verified before the record can be confirmed.
The Met Office holds temperature records for the past 150 years, dating back to the late 1860s, although there are variations in when different areas started keeping records, and records in earlier years would be less frequent than those from recent decades….