So, according to the Met Office, Britain is reaching the end of what will ‘almost certainly’ be the warmest summer on record. The average temperature across Britain up until 25 August was 16.13 Celsius, compared with 15.76 Celsius for the previous record-holder, 2018.

There is still a week to go, of course, and it is a week which, on average, you would expect to be one of the coolest weeks of the summer, coming as it does right at the end. But let us assume that the Met Office is right and 2025 really does grab its place in the record books. So what? It has also been a largely benign summer in Britain, with little in the way of extreme heat – the maximum for the summer so far was 35.8 Celsius, 4.5 Celsius below the UK record. There have been relatively few cases of thundery downpours and

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