Flashback to August 1976

Back in the 1970s, before climate change and global warming were hot topics in more ways than one, a long, sweltering summer was the stuff of dreams in Britain.

But there are limits, and the summer of 1976, when the hot and dry days went on, and on, and on, eventually led to people to cry out for rain.

So much so that when there was a spot or two during a cricket match at Lord’s, the crowd cheered.

It was a summer which smashed records and has lived long in the memory of those who lived through it.

And it prompted what we would no doubt today term a climate emergency.

August 23, 1976, saw Shropshire’s fire service have its busiest day to date, with a record number of calls. At one point, every single fire appliance in the county was committed.

Firefighters appealed for the public to help out by tackling small fires themselves and things had become so bad that the county’s fire service was given Home Office authority to draft in four of the famous ex-Auxiliary Fire Service Green Goddess appliances from mothballing.

These fire engines had been kept in store in case of some great crisis like a nuclear war.

Television and radio appeals were made for off-duty firefighters to relieve the exhausted full-time crews.

Meteorologists charted the endless hot, dry, days.

One of them was well-known Lilleshall weatherman John Warner who, in a 2016 interview for the 40th anniversary year, recalled: “I seem to remember thinking that this can’t go on.

“We had temperatures of 30C (86F) or more for 11 consecutive days in Shropshire.”

Here are some of his figures for that time recorded at his weather station.

“The rainfall in June 1976 was 23mm, less than an inch – that was my reading at Lilleshall. In July it was only 15mm, and in August it was 15.7mm, so we had three months in which it was well below average. Then in September we had a whacking, with 158.6mm, which is over six inches in old money.”

As for the heat in this heatwave, looking through his records he marked June 26 as the hottest June day on record at 28C, but had to update only three days later when that record was smashed, with 31C on June 29.

“Then it went on getting hotter. On July 3 it was 33C (91F),” he said.

This was the period of an 11-day unbroken heatwave of 30C-plus temperatures, with the July 3 figure being the hottest of all.

For peak heat, we’ve beaten that since in Shropshire – the 97F (36C) on August 3, 1990, was the county’s hottest day since records began in 1903 – but in terms of consistently high temperatures and sunny days, 1976 was an exceptional year.

While Shropshire had it hot, some had it even hotter – the south east had highs of 32C for 15 consecutive days.

As for the impact on ordinary Salopians' lives, there was a water crisis and at the beginning of July there was the inevitable hosepipe ban slapped on Shropshire and Mid Wales as reservoir levels dipped.

On the very day the ban was announced, Shropshire was sweltering in temperatures touching 90F.

The landscape became parched and tinder dry with no rain for 45 days in places. Road surfaces melted, and railway lines buckled.

Gardeners were urged to let flowers die, and to use bath water to water trees and bushes. There were warnings that sports grounds were turning into dust bowls – at the Telford United ground, the Bucks Head, only the newly-sown centre circle was watered.

There was a huge fire on Haughmond Hill in August which destroyed 150,000 trees over 120 acres. Soldiers joined in the battle against the flames.

Drink sales at the Carrefour hypermarket in Telford town centre were at least three times higher than normal, and it sold out of cream.

Lager sales across the county rocketed, and ice cream makers like Mor-Isis in Telford battled to keep up with demand. Queues formed at Market Drayton swimming baths.

Famously Denis Howell, the sports minister, became the “Minister of Drought.”

It worked. On August 28, parts of Shropshire had their first rain since August 6, but not in any measurable amount. But both September and October proved to be markedly wet.

The spell was broken.