The heatwave might be over for now. But the drownings will keep happening

There's also another thing we can be sure will happen, which goes hand-in-hand with hot weather: more people dying through drowning. Unspeakably, at least 17 people across the UK lost their lives in separate open water-related incidents in the recent heatwave, including a high school pupil, 16-year-old Charlie Noble, whose body was recovered from the water at Bracklinn Falls near Callendar.

Over the recent bank holiday weekend, my phone kept flashing with news alerts that yet another person had died getting into difficulty in water and, tragically, evidence shows that there will inevitably be more this summer. Almost half of all drownings in the UK happen in the four months from May to August, and there are three times as many accidental drownings in periods of extreme heat compared to the average summer's day.

READ MORE: Spike in accidental drownings leads to safety calls as temperatures soar

Suddenly he was gone

From our lochs to our rivers, our reservoirs to our beaches, drowning is all around us. It’s something my family has experience of: my Dad's brother, John, drowned aged 13 on a school trip to the Lake District in 1960. It was a perfect storm of conditions: a hot day, a bunch of teenage lads, a group that should have been better supervised; the bed of the tarn shelved quickly, suddenly; and the water was shockingly cold. He was there, and then he wasn't – a line you hear so often.

The conditions that John died in not only exist today, they have become even more intense, with extreme heatwaves, a culture of masochism, and a normalisation of drinking and taking drugs near open water. People have not been taught how to go into cold water properly, and there is an increasing disparity in swimming education along ethnic and socioeconomic lines.

Figures released at the end of May from Water Safety Scotland show that tragically 39 people died in Scottish waters in 2025, a rise on the previous year. We cannot and should not normalise these deaths as an inevitable part of summer – a family photo and a headline for a day or so until the next piece of news rolls around.

READ MORE: Boy, 12, who drowned on River Tay allowed on trip even though he couldn't swim

In the short-term, we need continued support for water safety bodies and messaging for the general public. We need to understand the complex factors that lead to drowning, and how these intersect with climate, land ownership and responsibility, education, inequalities, and cultural norms.

And crucially, we need to ensure that everyone has access to swimming education: affordable swimming lessons, support for schools, and proper resourcing for our public leisure centres. Death by drowning should not be a part of our summers, and my thoughts go out to the families of those we have lost.

Clare Skelton-Morris is a communications manager, and she is writing a non-fiction memoir, entitled John, about drowning, fear and family legacy