AS temperatures remain high, these long hot summer days evoke memories of the summer heatwaves of the 1970s when the city was awash with sunshine day after day.

Forty years ago this month, back in July 1975, Southampton enjoyed scorching temperatures as the south of England sizzled in the middle of a gloriously sunny heatwave.

As the mercury rose that summer, so did the numbers of Sotonians venturing out and about to parks and suntraps around the city. Folk dusted off their swimming costumes, summer frocks and shorts and flocked to the city’s Lido, the Common’s parks and paddling pools, and along seafront destinations such as Mayflower Park and Weston Shore to soak up the sunshine with a dip in the water or a nice refreshing ice cream.

Even at the city’s Zoo on the Common, where many of the animals were used to sunnier climes, hosepipes were rolled out to provide some welcome relief from the blazing sunshine in the form of a refreshing cold showers of cold water.

However, few could have foreseen how good the summer that year would turn out when the weirdest, and perhaps most unseasonal, weather swept across the region during the first week of summer.

On June 1, 1975, a surge of polar air that had originated over Greenland moved southwards across the UK, reaching the south coast by lunchtime the next day. Heavy snow fell in the north on high ground in Scotland and northern England and Wales and occasional flurries were reported in places along the south coast, although the snow did not settle on the south.