UK temperatures to beat Guernsey this week

Monday 23 July 2018

Despite the hot temperatures we're enjoying, it won't be as warm in the islands as it will be in the UK this week.

A heatwave health watch alert has been issued in the UK, with people told to stay out of the sun as temperatures look set to rise above 30c in the day and 15c in the night for two consecutive days.

But Guernsey won’t quite hit those heights, according to a Guernsey Met Office spokesman.

He said this year, we’ve had higher temperatures already than the ones we are currently forecast - and it is currently looking unlikely those highs will be surpassed.

"The highest will be the mid-20s," the Met Office spokesman said, "but on 7, 8 and 9 July it was actually a bit warmer. The top temperatures will be today Monday) and tomorrow [Tuesday] when it will be 25c, and then the rest of the week it will be between 23c and 25c. There might be a bit more cloud toward the end of the week, but it is staying dry 

“It won’t be as hot here as the UK because of the sea, which has a cooling effect in the summer and a heating effect in the winter. For us to get out hottest temperatures, we need a south-eastly breeze off the continent.”

The forecast for the coming weeks looked like it was going to be dry, the spokesman added, with “no breakdown [in the weather] for the foreseeable future.”

If the current run of hot weather continued for another month, then comparisons could be made with the legendary summer of 1976 – which produced one of the longest heatwaves in memory. Thanks to extreme water shortages, the island also very nearly ran out of fresh water, and the-then States Water Board said: '’It is believed that there is a moral obligation upon every person to use water with the utmost care and for positively necessary purposes only,” and significant restrictions were introduced. Whereas today, the island’s reservoirs are at 90.8% capacity.