When you look back over the years (or dare I say, decades), there aren’t many particular seasons that stand out from the crowd. The summer of 1976 is one, for those old enough to remember. At age 6, for me, it seemed to go on forever and the house was shrouded in gloom as the curtains were kept drawn to keep out the heat. Then there was the summer of 2020, the extraordinary COVID summer, when the roads and skies fell silent, and we clapped on Thursday nights. We all remember that.
And, I suspect the summer of 2026 will be another that we recall for many decades to come. The long, hot, dry Sussex summer of 2026, when the landscape turned brown, and we all quietly wilted. It feels like we’re living through history, a distinct moment in time when a line has been drawn in the sand. Not simply because it has been hot. Not simply for what that heat has done to the landscape, but because of the unmistakable changing of the rhythm of everyday life.
Bluebells in March, blackberries in June?
Looking back, the signs were there far earlier than I realised. I saw my first bluebell in March, a quiet hint that nature was running ahead of itself. Then the vivid, zesty greens of spring seemed to vanish almost as quickly as they had arrived. By the end of June, I remember driving home from the midsummer celebrations on Highdown Hill. I don’t think I consciously noticed it at the time, but the burnt-gold grass lining the dual carriageway had already become the dominant colour of the Sussex landscape. The lush greens had disappeared weeks earlier than usual.
There was rain, but remarkably little. I remember just one spell of torrential downpours. Yet beyond those few days, I struggle to remember any meaningful rainfall at all since when? June? May? April?
July is always frenetic
This July was been no exception. I went to Crowborough (twice), East Dean, Seaford, Henfield, Worthing, Fittleworth, Horsham, Selsey, Devil’s Dyke, Slindon, Shipley, Winchelsea, Icklesham, Rotherfield and Chichester.
An African sky
And everywhere I travelled, the landscape looked transformed. The South Downs, so often a tapestry of emerald, lime and deep woodland green, took on the appearance of somewhere much further south. The hills glowed with burnt gold, reminiscent of an African landscape beneath merciless sun. Teenage boys on Crowborough Common chatted to me about how they were worried about forest fires. Farmers talked of failing crops. Paths were caked dry and cracked, and sheep on the Downs sheltered from an almost relentless sun.
Even the plants are telling their own story. An old vine scrambling up the garden wall, usually neglected and rarely producing anything of note, is this year laden with clusters of deep burgundy grapes. They have ripened astonishingly early. The fruit is plentiful but small, never having had the soaking rains that would normally swell each grape to its full size. The blackberry bushes, were already heavy with berries in early July, another quiet reminder that this has been no ordinary summer.
Now, at the end of August, there is finally a hint of autumn in the air, a coolness first thing in the morning. The first dew. But many of the leaves have already faded to yellow and fallen from the trees and the effects of this summer will not disappear with the first autumn rain. Water levels and reserves will take time to recover, and the longer-term forecasts suggest we should expect increasingly unpredictable extremes: prolonged dry spells followed perhaps by periods of intense rain, and the possibility of more exceptionally hot summers to come.
There have, of course, been glorious moments. Long, balmy evenings outside. Days when Sussex has felt almost Mediterranean. Vineyards thriving on the Downs and weeks when coats and umbrellas have seemed like relics from another life. But there has been another side too: scorched grass, struggling wildlife, depleted water supplies, exhausted gardens and a landscape placed under prolonged stress. Which brings me back to that line in the sand. Climate change is here.
Perhaps that is the real legacy of the summer of 2026. Not simply that it was exceptionally hot, but that it accelerated something that was already happening. Adaptation is no longer an abstract conversation for another generation. It is about how we build our homes, manage our water, plant our gardens, farm our land and design our towns. But even apparently obvious solutions, such as installing air conditioning, bring their own environmental costs.
The summer of 1976 has lived in the national memory for half a century. Perhaps, in years to come, we will talk about the summer of 2026 in much the same way. Except this time, it may not be remembered as a freak summer. It may be remembered as the summer when we finally understood that the climate had changed.
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