100 °F: Britain's hottest day
Britain entered a new hot-weather era yesterday when the temperature record was broken by a substantial margin, the thermometer exceeding the 100 °F mark for the first time. In the mid-afternoon of a sweltering day in southern England, the temperature at Heathrow airport was recorded at 37.9 °C (100.2 °F), higher than the previous record of 37.1 °C 08.8 °F) set at Cheltenham in August 1990. It was the hottest temperature since records began in 1659 Nigel Reed, head of the operations center at the UK Met Office in Bracknell, Berkshire said that although no individual weather event could be directly attributed to global warming, "this was consistent with what we would expect to happen with climate change". Although there can be no direct proof that yesterday's record temperature was the result of climate change, many observers see it as part of a steadily warming pattern affecting the world, not least because of the margin by which the previous UK record was broken - nearly a whole degree centigrade and nearly a degree-and-a-half Fahrenheit. Bookmakers will have to pay out an estimated £ 500,000 to hundreds of people who put money on the heat hitting 99 °F and 100 °F William Hill faces having to pay out up to £250,000 "It will be as big a payout as one of the White Christmas ones," said Graham Sharpe, William Hill's spokesman.
