A sudden storm rolled over a Wiltshire town on Tuesday, May 26, cutting through 28-degree heat after Tanith Pike spotted towering clouds gathering near Chippenham while she walked on Westbury’s White Horse.
Pike said the scene was startling because blue skies and strong heat gave way to dark weather almost at once. Bouts of heavy rain and rumbling thunder followed before the skies cleared again, leaving one of the season’s most striking weather contrasts in plain view.
“I thought it was very surreal that all around me it was blue skies and 28 degrees heat and then suddenly there was a storm in the distance! It felt a little apocalyptic!” Pike said. “I was lucky, right place, right time!”
The storm came as the Met Office warned that much of central England could be hit with thunderstorms, even as many areas were expected to stay hot and sunny. The forecast included the chance of as much as 30mm of rainfall in the space of an hour in some places, a reminder of how quickly the weather can turn when heat builds over the UK in late spring.
The timing mattered because Tuesday’s temperatures exceeded Monday’s provisional all-time hottest meteorological spring temperature of 34.8C recorded at Kew Gardens in south-west London. Met Office meteorologist Alex Burkill said the conditions were not just warm, but exceptional. “It really is an exceptionally warm or very hot spell at the moment,” he said. “For any time of the year it’s hot, but for May in particular – it is still meteorological spring.”
Burkill compared the scale of the heat to the first time the UK reached 40C, underscoring how unusual the spell has become. The spring heatwave is also shaping the days ahead: Chippenham was forecast to exceed 30 degrees in the afternoon on May 27 with clear skies throughout the day, while Swindon was expected to break 30 degrees again with only a slight chance of evening rain. The same pattern, with intense heat and short, sharp storms, has been seen in recent severe-weather outbreaks from Cambridge to Perth and across parts of Australia.
For Pike, the moment was over almost as fast as it began. For forecasters, it was another sign that the hot spell is no ordinary May stretch — it is the kind of weather that can deliver record heat, sudden thunder and heavy rain in the same afternoon.
