Another day, another scorcher. The heat wave carries on, but is this run of hot weather going to break any records? Saturday set a new record of 27.3C (81.1F) at Herstmonceux, East Sussex. But it will take much more to break the May 29, 1944 record of 32.8C (92F). This was also the highest temperature of the entire year, which is extremely rare for May. The heat triggered off some horrific cloudbursts at the end of the Whitsun holiday and worst hit was Holmfirth, a small textile town nestling in the Yorkshire Pennines. People were returning home from Whitsun processions when a thunderstorm broke and huge downpours overwhelmed the local river. A raging torrent tore up factories, shops and houses, leaving dozens of families homeless and three people dead.

However, the disaster was called The Forgotten Flood, because of strict censorship of weather news during the Second World War. It was only a week before the D-Day invasion of Normandy, and high pressure over Europe was pushing northwards, sweeping very warm air up from Spain. But in an about-turn on June 1 low pressure moved in from the Atlantic and storms raged through the Channel. The original date for D-Day, June 5, had to be delayed by 24 hours to wait for a lull in the storms.