The intense heat wave affecting most of Europe reached the north of the continent on Tuesday (19/07), with thermometers reaching more than 40 degrees Celsius in the UK for the first time and forecasts of record temperatures in western Germany. Meanwhile, other parts of the continent are still reeling from the scorching sun that is fueling intense wildfires and overwhelming emergency services.
The Met Office, the UK’s national weather service, said the 40C mark had been crossed in the country for the first time in history, according to provisional measurements. According to authorities, 40.2 degrees Celsius was recorded at Heathrow Airport, outside London, at 12:50 pm (local time) on Tuesday.
UK meteorologists have been predicting for days that the current national record of 38.7°C, set in 2019, will be broken on Tuesday.
The Bureau of Meteorology also said Tuesday morning that the previous morning was the hottest on record, after temperatures remained above 25 degrees Celsius in most areas, according to provisional measurements.
Meanwhile, 38.1 degrees Celsius on Monday in Suffolk, eastern England, made it the third hottest day ever in the UK, while Wales broke the temperature record after thermometers hit 37.1 degrees.
The heat is affecting Britain’s transport network as some railways were closed on Tuesday and other services were affected as well. “Much of our infrastructure is not built to this degree,” British Transport Secretary Grant Shapps told Sky News.
The intense heat wave that has hit most of Western Europe for a week, with temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius, has already caused more than a thousand deaths, according to health authorities in Portugal and Spain.
Germany on alert
The German Weather Service (DWD) expects temperatures in parts of western Germany to beat this year’s record set on June 19, at 39.2 degrees Celsius.
The absolute maximum was recorded in Germany in July 2019 in Duisburg, one of the urban centers in the west of the country, when it reached 41.2 degrees Celsius. According to DWD, the thermometers will likely be close to that mark on Tuesday.
The current heat wave is expected to extend to the south of the country and reach some parts of the east on Wednesday, including Berlin. German authorities have urged people in the west and south of the country to be very careful.
The climate crisis is costing Germany more than 6.6 billion euros in annual losses, according to an independent study commissioned by the Ministry of Economics and Climate Protection.
The study notes that this damage was the result of extreme weather events caused by the climate crisis, including recent events such as exceptionally hot and dry summers in 2018 and 2019 and floods in July last year in the west of the country.
France
Across the English Channel in France, a number of towns and cities recorded their highest temperatures on Monday, according to the National Weather Service.
Saint-Brieuc on the Channel coast reached 39.5 ° C, breaking the previous record of 38.1 ° C, and the western city of Nantes recorded 42 ° C, breaking a decade-old record of 40.3 ° C, established in 1949.
Firefighters in southwestern France are still battling to contain two major fires that have caused widespread devastation. For nearly a week, armies of firefighters and water-bombing planes have been battling the fires that mustered so much of France’s fire-fighting capacity.
Ireland, on Monday, recorded temperatures of 33 degrees Celsius in Dublin – the highest since 1887 – while Belgium expects temperatures of 40 degrees Celsius or higher.
The heat wave is the second to affect parts of Europe in recent weeks.
European Commission researchers said nearly half (46%) of EU territory had experienced levels of drought deemed vulnerable, while 11% were on alert, and crops were already suffering from water shortages.
Fires in France, Greece, Portugal and Spain destroyed thousands of hectares of forest.
The 9-kilometre-long, 8-kilometer-wide area was still ablaze near Pilate d’Dion in France, the highest sand dunes in Europe, turning stunning landscapes, popular campgrounds, and pristine beaches into a scorching inferno.
“The fire literally explodes everything with its ferocity,” said Mark Vermeulen, head of the local fire department. “40-year-old pine trunks are exploding”.
A total of 8,000 people were evacuated from their homes near the dunes on Monday as a precaution as shifting winds spread thick smoke in residential areas, according to officials.
About 32,000 tourists and residents were forced to evacuate from their places of residence in France, and many of them were taken to emergency shelters.
Prosecutors in the southwestern city of Bordeaux said Monday evening that a man suspected of starting one of the fires had been arrested.
Spain and Portugal
Data from the Portuguese authorities indicate that high temperatures have already caused the deaths of more than 600 people in the country, most of them elderly. Spanish health authorities have recorded more than 300 deaths linked to the heat wave.
A 69-year-old shepherd has been killed by a fire in the northwestern province of Zamora, regional officials said on Monday. On Sunday, a firefighter was killed in the same area. Later on Monday, an office worker in his fifties died of heat stroke symptoms in Madrid.
Authorities reported that about 20 forest fires continued to rage from the south to Galicia in the far northwest, with the fires destroying about 4,500 hectares of forest.
Fires in Portugal killed two more people in the northern region of Vila Real on Monday after a car carrying two residents crashed into a bank when they were apparently trying to flee a fire zone, officials said. “We found the car and these two people, in their 70s, were completely burnt out,” said Morca’s mayor, Mario Artur Lopez. The victims are from the nearby village of Benabis.
Almost the entire country is on high alert due to the bushfires, despite a slight dip in temperatures, which last Thursday reached 47 degrees Celsius – a record for July. Forest fires have already destroyed between 12,000 and 15,000 hectares of vegetation in Portugal.
md/lf (EFE, AFP)
