After Saturday's 32.4C baking, showers take edge off temperatures

Showers and cloud kept yesterday from being the hottest day of the year. Temperatures had looked set to come close to Saturday's record-breaking high but a heavy mid-afternoon band of rain brought respite to large chunks of baking Britain.

The mercury reached a sweltering 32.4C (90.3F) at Cavendish in Suffolk on Saturday, and forecasters believed yesterday would eclipse even that.

But the highest temperature recorded was still far above average at 30.2C in Cambridge.

The south-east was the hottest part of the country with most areas recording temperatures in the high 20s.

Around the country sun lovers enjoyed slightly cooler conditions with highs of 24C in Exeter and Altnaharra in the north of Scotland, and 25C in the Humber.

Gareth Harvey, a forecaster with MeteoGroup, the Press Association's weather division, said: "The slight dip in temperature was caused by an unstable area bringing more cloud and some showers.

"The temperatures are not far off [Saturday's] but the cloud pegged them back so there was not as much sunshine as yesterday."

The average temperature in the south-east of England for this time of year is 21.6C, and although today will be cooler and fresher than at the weekend the weather will still be good.

The mini heatwave saw thousands flocking to seaside locations and filling public parks to soak up the rays.

Bookmaker William Hill offered odds of 16/1 that temperatures would top 100F (37.7C) during the Paralympics.

* The sun shone for music fans at the V Festival in Staffordshire this weekend, but the enjoyment of some 80,000 revellers was blighted by the "unexplained" death of a man on the site.

Timothy Brockhurst, 22, from Stoke Heath, near Market Drayton in Shropshire, was found in a tent in an unresponsive state, and was pronounced dead at the site. His death was not being treated as suspicious, Staffordshire Police said.