Londoners endured a stifling 33.1C (91.6F), and the highest temperature was recorded at Wyton, Cambridgeshire, which registered 33.7C (92.7F).

Several villages on the North York Moors were cut off by flash flooding, which washed away roads. RAF helicopters rescued a driver from the roof of his car and flew a 60-year-old woman to hospital with a suspected heart attack after she fell in a river near the market town of Helmsley.

Kate Shorthouse, who works at the Feversham Arms, a local hotel, said: “I have never seen anything like it in this country.”

A Met Office forecaster said that the temperature was unlikely to reach such levels again this month, but the South would enjoy high temperatures for the next seven to ten days.

The ingredients are in place for higher temperatures and a punishing drought this summer, especially in the South.

Reservoirs have endured below average rainfall for seven of the past eight months and one of the driest winters in the past 100 years. Southern Water has imposed a hosepipe ban on hundreds of thousands of customers. The Environment Agency has said that river flows and reservoir levels have decreased in all regions.

Although it was stiflingly hot in some places yesterday, the hottest recorded day in Britain was August 10, 2003, when a temperature of 38.5C (101.3F) was reached near Gravesend, in Kent. The hottest June temperature was 35.6C (96F), recorded at Mayflower Park, Southampton, on June 28, 1976.

Two contrasting weather patterns are to blame for the present conditions. A pocket of humid air from North Africa is driving the heatwave in the South. It originated in the Sahara and collected moisture as it drifted across the Mediterranean and up the Bay of Biscay to southern England. A cooler front has been moving from Northern Ireland across the Irish Sea into Scotland.

The collision of the weather patterns has had explosive consequences, leading to spectacular thunderstorms and heavy downpours across parts of Wales, northern England and Scotland. In Hawarden, Cheshire, 41mm, or roughly a month’s average rainfall, fell in two hours yesterday.

Nigel Boulton, a Met Office forecaster, said: “In the South it has been the hottest June day since 1976, but further north there is a risk of golf-ball-sized hailstones tonight, which only happens about twice a year. It’s a normal summer pattern but this time it’s been rather more dramatic.”

While the heat took its toll, it was water that proved fatal as six people drowned and a 13-year-old boy suffered serious head injuries. In Sunbury, southwest London, a 16-year-old boy died after trying to swim across the Thames, and a 23-year-old man drowned after leaping off cliffs near Anstys Cove Beach at Babbacombe, Devon. Two men drowned swimming in lakes at Milton Keynes and Stevenage.

A 24-year-old man drowned in an open-air swimming pool in Hitchin, Hertfordshire. The man had become unwell while swimming and had been pulled out of the water.

A second teenager drowned after jumping into the River Medlock at Clayton Vale in Manchester. The boy, 17, failed to surface and his body was found two hours later.

Last night a boy aged 13 was critically ill after a powerboat accident off Portland, Dorset. He had been navigating in a race but fell overboard and was hit by another boat.

In Scotland a family with young children was rescued by helicopter from a flooded island after camping overnight.

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