Lancaster University’s Hazelrigg weather station recorded its highest June temperature on record at 30.7°C on 26 June 2026, Lancaster University has announced. The milestone shattered the previous record of 30.3°C set just the day before, which had itself surpassed the old June high of 30.1°C logged in 2023.
The heatwave also delivered a sweltering night, with the mercury staying above 20°C on the night of 25 to 26 June. The minimum of 21.6°C marked only the sixth tropical night in the station’s history and the second warmest night of any month in 60 years of records. Dr James Heath, a fieldwork support technician at the Lancaster Environment Centre, explained that the average temperature at the site has climbed by 0.25°C per decade, matching the global trend.
Hazelrigg has served as a Met Office climatological station since 1976, with a further decade of readings taken on the university’s Bailrigg campus. The long dataset shows how even a modest average rise has a disproportionate effect on extremes. Taking the hottest 0.1% of summer days, that benchmark is now nearly four times more likely to be exceeded than it was a decade ago. In the first fifty years of measurements, 30°C was reached just three times, equivalent to a once-in-17-years event. By contrast, the last eight summers alone have produced six such days.
Four of the station’s six tropical nights have occurred since 2022, with the others recorded in July 1975 and August 1990. The highest temperature ever measured at Hazelrigg remains 35.3°C, set on 19 July 2022, but the back-to-back June records underscore a rapid shift in the frequency of extreme heat.
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