1976

[Georgeskitchen]

Who is old enough to remember 1976?
The never ending heatwave. I was 15 at the time. It was pretty boiling hot. Water shortages with stand pipes to get water.The government even had a drought minister!
Can't remember any hysteria,( no social media back then, thank god)
All I can remember, growing up in a famous holiday resort, was a great summer with fabulous weather for weeks on end. Probably one of the best years of my life.
Anyone relate?

I was six. We always went to my great grandparents cottage in Yorkshire, and I remember a day at Goredale Scar when the river was just gone, and hordes of kids were climbing the rocks where the waterfall has dried up.
And the river at Richmond was really low, less than knee deep, and teeming with crayfish things. We caught loads in our beach buckets (let them go again!)
And I remember the ladybirds but on the beach. The sand was just carpeted with them.
my dad was a student at the time, doing his teaching qualification, and got a temporary job on an ice cream van. He would park it outside our house and give me and my sister massive cones with a bubbly (from a screwball) in the bottom, an ice lolly upside down in the top, and all the "monkey blood" and sprinkles - we called them "witches hats" 😁

I was 22. I had come home to London after a long stay on a kibbutz,and was living with my parents and brother in their flat. Started a job in a publishers on Oxford Street. It was so hot at night, sometimes I used to get up, have a cool shower, and go back to bed without drying myself. But I tolerated heat much better then than now.

I had moved to the U.S. three years before. I came home for a long visit in June 1976 for 6 months with my little boy. I was so looking forward to seeing green grass and having a cool summer. It wasn't to be.

I was 5. I do remember it. I had a fascination with collecting seeds in the garden and I remember getting heatstroke despite having a knotted handkerchief on my head which obviously should have worked a treat

Now there’s something I would never have thought of again!

I was 6. I thought I remembered it, but I actually don’t. My memories must be of another year because they are of a house that we didn’t live in until I was seven. My parents rattled on about the summer of ‘76 for years and years and years…

Human memories aren't very reliable though. You remember it as a super hot heatwave because it was at the time...

But nowhere near as hot as we have now. These show the number of 'tropical nights' (above 20 degrees) in the UK.

As you can see, 1976 didn't actually involve that many days that were so hot you would've struggled to sleep at night...

Also the hottest temp in 1976 in the day was 35 degrees, not the 40 degrees predicted.

Five degrees hotter makes a lot of difference at these kind of temperatures

Ladybirds on the beach at Berrow

We were covered head to toe.

I was 3

One of my first memories

I was training to be a midwife.The wards were old and fairly cool, but the newish delivery suite was very warm and stuffy. It was a very good time in my life as I was training with some great characters and we spent a lot of time together. I remember watching snatches of the Borg v Nastase Wimbledon final between deliveries.

I was 6 and we moved house in the July. The new garden was much bigger and had a whole load of raspberries, loads of huge juicy raspberries.

I was 13 and the only things I remember about the summer of 1976 are sleeping downstairs in the living room because it was too hot upstairs and going on a school trip to the coast and us all singing Don’t Go Breaking My Heart on the coach

I mostly remember the Summer of 76 for my parents and all our quite reserved neighbors having a massive water fight that literally went on for hours.

It made such an impact on me as a young child as it was so out of character for the lot of them, I guess being boiled alive brings out feverish behaviors.

Oh I love ladybirds. I’m happy to hear they might be making a comeback after the heatwave, although I never knew they could bite!

what a lovely thread. I like the camping idea too on the green.

Gosh that's impressive, we need ministers that can produce fast results like that today!

I was 9. We’d moved from Hertfordshire to Devon, and had to wait to move into the cottage we’d bought.

so we lived in a tent at a place called Jack’s patch between Bishopsteignton and Teignmouth. With a cat! I remember the ladybirds, my mum said lots of ladybirds means a hot spell. It was glorious as a 9 year old. Jack’s Patch is now a sprawling garden centre I believe, his family sold the land after he died. He was a cantankerous old Devon man, we kids could barely understand him 😂😂🙈

Yes, I remember 1976 very well. The temperature was in the 30s (over 90s F, which was still widely used at the time).
Fewer offices had air condition, but men took their jackets off.
There were water shortages - that is, we were warned not to use too much water, as rivers and reservoirs were very low.
Otherwise, it was a glorious summer.

It was a wonderful summer, but it was nowhere near as hot as we will be seeing next week. I remember the excruciating sunburn - I had blisters that covered my shoulders - and the melting tarmac. We had a visit from the Wessex Water people at school, and we’re all given leaflets and stickers about saving water; they featured a character called Ellie the Effluent. :-)

The swarming ladybirds were as a result of collapsing aphid populations, I think.

I was a young child, I remember the roads melting, the ladybirds and what felt like an endless Summer of playing out, a neighbour took us to the seaside for the day, I had never seen the sea before ! The car journey was very hot, no A/C even though they had an expensive new car and we had to sit on our towels on the way back as the vinyl seats were boiling hot.

I remember the 🐞.

I was working in central London and living in a 7th floor flat.
We just couldn’t cool down. We didn’t have the temperatures that are forecast for tomorrow though !

Bloody bell that's a relief!

Wonderful memories, I was 18 that year and had a week of celebrations - my DPs were very good at organising parties and my birthday weekend was just fantastic.

I agree that I don't think it was as hot then as it is now ... I can remember my DF actually encouraging us to have baths so he could syphon (sp?) the water out to the garden during the hose pipe ban .

I was born in the July of that year and my mum has told me how hot it was at the time.

I remember it, a long glorious summer holiday. You got up knowing the sun would shine every day.
I remember roads melting, a plague of ladybirds, and stand pipes for water.
I also remember that we never used sun lotion, or were told to wear a hat.