Hottest week on record near Glasgow: the July 1934 heatwave at Paisley

Updated: 2026-08-29

The warmest seven-day period ever recorded by the weather station closest to Glasgow did not happen in a recent summer. It occurred in July 1934, when a spell of exceptional heat settled over the western Lowlands of Scotland. The point of measurement nearest to Glasgow is the Met Office station at Paisley, in Renfrewshire, situated at an altitude of 32 metres and about 11.4 km from the city centre. These are its historical records, drawn from the official Met Office MIDAS archive.

Between Thursday 5 July and Wednesday 11 July 1934, the average daily maximum temperature at Paisley reached 28.71°C, the highest weekly mean maximum for any seven-day window in the station's records. Within that sultry week, the hottest single day was Monday 9 July 1934, when the thermometer climbed to 30.0°C. That value is notable not just for its intensity but for its timing: it remains the peak of the warmest week ever logged in this series, a benchmark that has held for over nine decades.

To understand how exceptional this was, it helps to look at the typical climate of the area. The Paisley station, which has been recording weather since 1914, shows a very different picture in an average year. The warmest month on the long-term mean chart is July, with an average daily maximum of just 19.3°C and a mean temperature of 15.5°C. August follows closely with an average maximum of 18.9°C and a mean of 15.2°C. The 1934 heatwave therefore pushed weekly average maximum temperatures nearly 9.5°C above what locals would normally expect in high summer — a striking anomaly even for a region accustomed to modest summer warmth.

The wider record confirms that the first half of July 1934 was an extraordinary episode. A look at the five warmest seven-day stretches in the entire series shows that the top three all fall within that same heatwave, while the other two belong to completely different decades. This clustering is a powerful sign of a genuine, sustained heat event rather than a single lucky day.

The five warmest weeks in the Paisley record (1914–2026)

The table below lists the five seven-day periods with the highest mean maximum temperature in the Met Office series for this station. The values are the average of the daily maximum temperatures over each seven-day window.

The pattern is unmistakable: the 1934 heatwave occupies the top three positions, with the week of 5–11 July leading at 28.71°C. The other two windows shift by just one day each — 4–10 July and 6–12 July — and both average exactly 28.0°C. This means that whichever way you slice that first full week of July 1934, it was relentlessly hot. The fourth-warmest week belongs to a different era entirely: a June 1940 spell averaged 27.77°C, and the fifth, from July 1977, reached 27.6°C. None of these later episodes managed to displace the 1934 benchmark.

How July 1934 fits into the seasonal cycle

Heatwaves of this intensity are rare in western Scotland because the maritime climate keeps summer temperatures moderate. The long-term monthly means for Paisley, covering the full period from 1914 to 2026, show how unusual the 1934 values were. The table below presents the average maximum and mean temperatures for each month of the year at this station, giving a baseline for comparison.

What these numbers reveal is that a weekly mean maximum of 28.71°C in July is far beyond the normal ceiling. The average July maximum at this station is 19.3°C, so the 1934 week was running more than 9°C above the typical daytime peak. Even the temperature on a single "normal" July day would rarely approach the 30.0°C reached on 9 July 1934. This was not a brief spike but a sustained week of intense heat, which explains why it has never been beaten.

It is also worth noting the broader context of the series. The Met Office records at Paisley cover a long sweep from 1 January 1914 to 28 August 2026, more than a century of daily observations. Within that entire span, no other seven-day period has managed to surpass the 1934 figure. The persistence of this record is remarkable: British summers have produced plenty of notable warm spells, many of them more recent, but none has dislodged this particular week from the top of the list.

For anyone in or around Glasgow wondering what the hottest week in local weather history felt like, the numbers offer a vivid picture. For seven straight days, the maximum temperature averaged 28.71°C, meaning every afternoon was hot by local standards. The single warmest afternoon came mid-week, on 9 July 1934, when 30.0°C was recorded. To put that in perspective for this corner of Scotland, the average July maximum at the same station is just 19.3°C — so that week was hotter on average than most summer days even reach today.

A heatwave like the one in 1934 is the kind of event that stays in the memory of a community for generations. It is a reminder that even the mild, maritime climate of the Clyde valley can occasionally produce intense heat, and that the official record, maintained continuously by the Met Office, documents those extremes with precision. While the weather in particular spots around Glasgow can vary due to local factors such as altitude, proximity to the river, or shelter in urban valleys, the Paisley station provides the closest and most reliable measurement of what the region experienced on those historic days.

Source: Met Office MIDAS data, Paisley station (Renfrewshire). Historical series from 1914 to 2026.

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