May has never seen such heat with record-breaking temperatures day and night.
Several records were broken earlier this week, with the 35.1C recorded in Kew Gardens not only setting a new record for May but also beating Kew’s highest June temperature.
Wales also set a new national May record on Tuesday, reaching 32.9C in Cardiff, while on Tuesday night, a new nighttime record was set in Camborne, Cornwall, with the minimum temperature falling no lower than 21.4C.
But with the hot temperatures came tragedy.
A 16-year-old boy has become the twelfth person to drown during the May heatwave.
Police were called to Bracklinn Falls near Callander in Stirlingshire on Thursday evening, responding to reports that a person was in difficulty.
As the country took stock of the impact, one corner of England was rapidly running out of one essential resource.
Thousands of people in Whitstable are still without water supply during the hot spell of weather as storage reservoirs for the area “reached a critical level”, South East Water said.
Queues of people lined up at a bottled water collection point at a Sainsbury’s, as the water company said 8,000 customers were without supply.
It comes as the firm urged customers to use water for essential purposes only – for drinking, washing and cooking, as supply issues continued from over the hot bank holiday weekend.
Earlier in the week, trains also became disrupted as a result of the hot weather.
So if this is the new normal, will anything change to prevent tragedy from repeating itself? Caroline Lewis reports.
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