On 1 June, the official start of summer, the Met Office released its three-month outlook for the UK.

The meteorological service explained on its site that this outlook is not an exact prediction or a guarantee of what will happen in the season. Instead, they say, it’s about broader trends; you can’t say for sure whether something like a heatwave will happen based on this information.

Nonetheless, they added, the most “notable” part of their most recent outlook is the expected hotter-than-usual UK summer temperatures.

“It follows that there is an increased chance of heatwave conditions developing at times,” they said.

We have already had an unusually hot start to the year, with temperatures reaching a record-breaking 35.1°C in Kew Gardens this May.

The Met Office has previously said that hotter summers are becoming more likely in the UK in general.

This outlook doesn’t aim to calculate exact dates, nor does it say there definitely will be heatwaves.

But it did mention that higher pressure, linked to hotter weather, is expected in the middle of June after a rainy start to the month.

“Towards the end of June, low pressure may begin to have more of an influence, especially across the south, where heavy showers and thunderstorms become more probable. It may also become hot in parts of the south,” the Met Office shared.

Even for the UK, 2026′s weather has been especially volatile. We went from record-breaking heatwaves to floods in a matter of days.

The Met Office’s Dr Emily Carlisle previously said this is part of a broader warming trend.

“This spring highlights both the natural variability of the UK’s weather and the longer-term warming we are observing. While conditions varied through the season, all three months of meteorological spring recorded mean temperatures within the UK’s top ten warmest on record,” she stated.

“While we expect fluctuations from year to year, this spring shows some of the changes we’re seeing in our weather patterns, with more extreme conditions becoming more frequent. The fact that nine of the ten warmest springs in England have occurred since 2007 illustrates this ongoing shift in the UK’s climate.”

The Met Office added that factors like the predicted 2026 El Niño can inform their three-month outlooks.