UK: Temperatures surpass 33C as storm warning kicks in

London: The hottest day of the year so far has been recorded in the UK, as a Met Office warning for thunderstorms comes into force.

A temperature of 33.2C was recorded on Saturday afternoon in Charlwood, near Gatwick, beating the previous 2025 record set earlier this week.

Saturday is expected to be the peak of the recent hot weather, with temperatures expected to dip into Sunday.

The yellow weather warning is in place until 03:00 BST on Sunday for parts of northern England, the Scottish Borders, and north-east Wales.

Storms are expected because the humid weather means there is plenty of moisture in unstable atmospheric conditions. They could bring localised flash flooding, large hail and lightning.

An amber heat-health alert in England issued by the UK Health Security Agency remains in force until Monday, as fresh research suggests nearly 600 people could die in the next four days because of the heat in England and Wales.

Researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Imperial College London predict there could be around 570 heat-related deaths, using decades of UK data, with the greatest number, 129, in London.

Prof Antonio Gasparrini, of the LSHTM, said: “Every fraction of a degree of warming will cause more hospital admissions and heat deaths, putting more strain on the NHS.”

Passengers were forced to evacuate a train in south London on Saturday as temperatures reached more than 30C in the capital.

A fault on a train near Loughborough Junction brought all services in the area to a halt, three of them outside station platforms, Thameslink and Network Rail said in a joint statement.

Passenger Angela Lewis said people onboard had been left on the train for about two hours before being removed, describing the incident as a “bloody nightmare”.

Thameslink and Network Rail apologised to affected passengers and said that “without power and air conditioning on such a hot day” it pulled resources from Sussex and Kent “to get personnel on site to safely evacuate passengers as quickly as possible along the track”.