The Heatwave ......

[TheOstrich]

It's dreadful down here in the Blackmore Vale. We've only had a brief overnight smattering of light rain once in about 7 weeks now.

The heat is energy-sapping …. difficult to raise the enthusiasm to do anything or go anywhere.

The wildlife is suffering and we've had two dead birds in the immediate area; one, a young thrush, in our back garden.

Everyone's too wrung out now even to be grumpy down the supermarket!

5 miles away, up on The Rock, Shaftesbury had a flippin' thunderstorm 10 days ago - not a hint of it here.

Hope everyone is coping OK …..

[Diflower]

Not a drop since about May here Ossie.
It's unbelievably hot, but I'm still not complaining, we have had such rubbish summers in recent years, this is a very rare treat.
We manage to keep the house relatively cool, helped of course by me being here most of the time, so windows and doors are open.
The garden of course is suffering, the washing up water doesn't go far!

[Gal]

I know it's a few degrees cooler here oop north but it's still been really warm and quite sunny at times. I'm loving it, it's so rare we get hot weather I'm really enjoying it. Especially after the really long bad winter, it's fab.

Sorry some are struggling, I know it's not for everyone x

[saundra]

It was mega hot here yesterday and today it's just lungfulls

of warm air making me feel exhausted it's was lovely the first few weeks but not now only because of my breathing and thankfully only the odd day I watched the news tonight and veg and fruit is just dried up soft fruit especially and seasonal stuff we've had hardly any rain either I was alot younger in 1976

[Kaz]

Ossie, I enjoyed it at first, but the 30-32 plus temps, and difficulty sleeping is starting to tell on me now.

Gal I think those few degrees make all the difference, anything under 30 and I can cope, and enjoy it, but it's brutal here. We have had rain, one very heavy downpour, which flooded my patio, but soon steamed off, and a few drops last Friday!

[Kaz]

((((Saundra)))))

[JanB]

We have different heat. We came inside earlier, as we felt rather cold - and it was 25C

Speaking to Julia earlier, she loves the heat, but said it's not a nice heat. The boys are really struggling to sleep.

I was in London in 1976 and it really was stifling.

But we're all happy here as we're having a lovely cool summer. Not been above 37C yet, although we've been told it's into the high 30's, low 40's next week.

I'll just sit in the pool

[JanB]

Saundra, because of really bad hay fever earlier this year, I had to get an inhaler.

It's a gibiter. Has lot of different things in it and has really helped. Maybe ask your doc?

I hope you feel better soonest xx

[JoM]

I've had enough of it. I don't like hot weather anyway, anything above 20c and I'm miserable. I do tolerate it better when we're abroad though.

The trees are losing their leaves and I'm worried about the wildlife. We saw a bird which seemed to be struggling one night last week on the common and the following morning it was lying dead on the path where we'd seen it the previous night, I've seen another couple of dead ones as I've walked around too

Fires too. There have been a few big ones on the Chase and yesterday afternoon there was a large one on Hednesford Hills. One in the woods by us made the local BBC radio news a couple of weeks ago.

((((Saundra))))

[Osc]

It's unbelievably hot, but I'm still not complaining, we have had such rubbish summers in recent years, this is a very rare treat.

I completely agree, it is less than five months since we were snowbound - I know which I prefer and it ain't the snow! Our last heatwave was 1976, which means that this is the first time in her life that Miss Osc has experienced temperatures like this in Ireland. I am dreading a return to our normal summer