Britain has recorded the highest temperature in history, as the 40ºC (104F) mark was temporarily broken for the first time at Heathrow Airport.
The previous record, 38.7 ° C in 2019, first fell when it was provisionally recorded 39.1 ° C on Tuesday morning in Charlwood in Surrey, and then reported as 40.2 ° C at Heathrow in the 12:50, the Meteorological Office said.
The rise in temperatures occurred after the hottest night on record, and the highest minimum temperature in a 24-hour period was recorded in Kenley, south London, at 25.8 ºC in 24 hours in 10 a.m. Tuesday.
Firefighters battled a fire at a beauty spot in the West Midlands, southeast homes were told to save water by turning off washing machines, and Transportation Secretary Grant Shapps admitted it would take decades to do so. that road and rail infrastructure be resilient. enough to cope with the heating climate.
Climate experts described the temperature record as a harbinger of growing risks to lives and livelihoods for at least the next 30 years.
Hannah Cloke, a professor of hydrology at the University of Reading, said the record was a “sad milestone” and part of a “sliding into territory unknown to humanity as we warm our planet.” He urged “all politicians calling for a dilution of climate policy to explain their thinking.”
Nigel Arnell, a professor of climate system science in Reading, said emergency heat health alerts like the one in much of England could happen every two to three years in the 2050s, and with more often if the world follows the path for temperatures to rise. more than 2C at the turn of the century.
A Manchester woman wears her jacket to protect her head and face from the sun on Tuesday. Photography: Joel Goodman / The Guardian
Storms and showers of up to 50 mm of rain are expected on Wednesday in parts of the south, south-east and east of England. The Met Office issued a yellow weather warning for possible flooding, lightning and a slight possibility of power outages.
During the night, firefighters battled a fire in Lickey Hills Rural Park near Redditch in the West Midlands. Images posted online showed scorched earth and skeletal trees after the fire spread over 50,000 square feet. Fifteen people were evacuated.
A fire breaks out at Birmingham Golf Course amid the UK heat wave: video
A 14-year-old boy and a 20-year-old man are believed to have been the fifth and sixth people to die since Saturday after having problems in the water. Scotland Yard said the boy was seen entering the Thames at Hampton, south-west London, and disappeared, allegedly drowned. The man died in the Cotswold water park.
Another swimmer was missing at sea off Clacton Pier in Essex and five more were pulled from the water.
As the East Coast main line closed from Yorkshire to London due to the heat, Shapps said it would take decades to adapt UK roads and railways to the high temperatures observed this week.
“There’s a long process to replace it and upgrade it to withstand temperatures, either very hot or sometimes much colder than we’re used to, and those are the impacts of global warming,” he said.
Network Rail said the temperature on a railway in Suffolk was recorded at 62ºC on Monday. There were no trains entering or leaving London King’s Cross on Tuesday, and no Thameslink or Great Northern services were planned to run north of the capital all day.
East Midlands rail services stopped between noon and 7pm on Tuesday afternoon, while services were interrupted on the west coast main line, the West Midlands Railway and the Chiltern Railways. .
Police said the asphalt on the A14 in Cambridgeshire was tightened to look like a “skating rink”.
Women with an umbrella to protect themselves from the sun wait at a bus stop in London. Photography: Anadolu / Getty Images Agency
Road congestion went down again in major British cities as millions of people worked from home and some schools remained closed until Wednesday. London’s Supreme Court, which was reformed just 13 years ago, closed to visitors on Tuesday due to heat and a failure in air conditioning.
But amid signs that days of public health warnings could have worked, the London Ambulance Service (LAS) said it had only received a slight increase in 999 calls for fainting and exposure to heat on Monday, and the ambulances did not have to wait outside hospitals longer than usual.
Boris Johnson, who on Monday was accused by Labor of “reviewing” his work, told the cabinet on Tuesday that “we should keep schools open and our transportation system getting as far as possible during these high temperatures, and keep our fantastic NHS offering to the people of this country ”.
A spokesman said: “With temperatures setting records in this country, the prime minister said no one could doubt that we were right to be the first major economy to go to zero net.”
As water demand increased, households in Surrey, Kent, Essex and Hertfordshire faced low water pressure. Affinity Water told customers in Harlow and Bishop’s Stortford to use water only for drinking, washing and cooking and to avoid the use of washing machines, dishwashers and hoses.
Two villages in Kent, Challock and Molash, have been without water since Saturday due to high demand and a power outage at a water treatment plant, and South East Water has installed a water station bottled.
“Water companies are seeing unprecedented maximum water demand during this extreme heat event. We are asking everyone to carefully consider the amount of water they are using at the moment,” a Water UK spokesperson said. He has asked people to only water the plants with watering cans, let the lawn turn brown and stop washing the cars.
Farmers said crops that would not normally require irrigation now needed it, while reservoirs were running out. “The lack of rain has severely hampered grass growth that could affect feed supply for the winter, adding additional costs to livestock,” said Tom Bradshaw, vice president of the National Farmers ’Union.