Opening summary
Europe is braced for another day of an unprecedented heatwave that has smashed records in many countries.
Italy’s health ministry has declared a red heatwave alert in 16 cities for Wednesday, including Milan and Rome, and in the UK, temperatures are expected to reach 40C in some areas.
The extreme weather is being driven by atmospheric and circulation patterns that keep hot air trapped in place for days, causing the mercury to slowly rise, with these factors exacerbated by global heating, experts say.
The UK is braced for record-breaking temperatures, with schools to close and people urged not to travel. Temperatures could hit 40C on Wednesday and Thursday in some parts of England and Wales and a red weather warning for extreme heat is in place covering an area stretching from London to Swansea and Somerset to Birmingham.
On Tuesday, France registered its hottest day on record as 40 people across the country were confirmed to have drowned while swimming in unsupervised areas over the last few days.
More than 90% of the French population is exposed to extreme heat – government data shows – with temperatures of 39C to 41C expected on Wednesday from Brittany to the Paris region, and in much of the south-west.
From Wednesday until at least Friday, central and southern Netherlands will be under a code orange for extreme heat. Anyone living in Amsterdam with a city pass may swim for free in six city outdoor pools, while the national rail company will run fewer trains on a number of routes from Wednesday due to the expected heat.
In the coming days, the heatwave is expected to extend into eastern Europe.
Poland’s weather service issued high-level heat warnings for the western part of the country from Thursday to Saturday, forecasting temperatures could break records.
Croatia’s popular Adriatic coast was also put under red alert for Friday and Saturday.
Hungary, already under a second-level heat alert, said it was raising that to the maximum level from Saturday to Tuesday as temperatures continued to rise.
Key events
Jakub Krupa
It’s Jakub Krupa here, taking over from Taz Ali.
With the heatwave dominating the headlines across Europe, we will run a special edition of our daily Europe Live blog today focused just on this issue.
I will bring you all the latest here. Good morning.
The French environment minister, Monique Barbut, said the heatwave in France could continue until 14 July.
“Next week should see a relative pause,” she told the French radio channel France Inter.
“But Météo-France tells us there is a strong likelihood that, from the following week onwards, we will see a return to extreme heat, which could last until 14 July.”
Grahame Madge, a Met Office spokesperson, said the agency is forecasting 39C as a headline maximum temperature on Thursday in the UK, most likely for somewhere in London or the south-east.
“It is possible we could see temperatures higher than the 39C if the final values are at the upper end of our narrow range,” he said, according to the Press Association.
“It is important to remember that the temperature value is only one element of this extreme heatwave story.
“The other major factor is the high humidity, which for many will make the intense heat even harder to endure.”
The highest temperature logged on Tuesday was 34.6C in Wisley, Surrey.
London mayor Sadiq Khan has triggered a “high” air pollution alert for the capital on advice from forecasters at Imperial College, the third one this year.
The heat has forced the army to cancel ceremonial operations in London and Windsor, to protect the “wellbeing” of its soldiers and horses.
UK June record to get ‘absolutely smashed’, BBC forecaster predicts
BBC weather forecaster Chris Fawkes said he expected the UK June temperature record to get “absolutely smashed”, telling the Today programme: “I think this afternoon we’re probably looking at highs reaching around 37C, maybe 38C, so by a big margin we are likely to set a new June temperature record.”
Some relief from the heatwave could start to come from the west of Europe later today, which is when Spain’s national weather service said temperatures would drop in most of the country.
By the afternoon, only parts of the Basque country in the north will still be marked red, and on Thursday no part of Spain will be rated either red or orange.
UK train delays and disruptions
Transport bosses in the UK have urged people to avoid travelling on Wednesday and Thursday, and warned those that do to “prepare for a disrupted journey”.
National Rail warned of disruption to Gatwick Express, Great Northern, Southern and Thameslink services until Friday.
Avanti West Coast said it planned to run fewer services than usual between Tuesday and Thursday, and that there was “a risk of further disruption”.
And Chiltern Railways said it had axed more than half its services until Friday “to ensure the safe operation of the railway”.
Eurostar has cancelled four trains planned to run between London and Paris on Wednesday and Thursday “due to expected adverse weather”.
Power outages in France
Europe’s record-breaking heatwave left around 68,000 households without electricity in western France on Wednesday, authorities said – the country’s first major power outage of the latest bout of extreme weather.
The outage, which involved a transformer on the electricity grid, was related to extreme temperatures, the prefecture in the coastal department of Finistere said in a statement.
Tuesday was the hottest day ever recorded in France, with an average temperature of 29.8C across the country. Similar conditions are expected until the weekend, with highs between 40C-42C and sweltering lows.
Nights look very uncomfortable, too, only dropping to 23C-28C in some parts of the country.
The extreme heat is expected to cause problems for parents today as schools in the UK shut early or close to protect pupils.
Almost 100 schools in Somerset will be fully closed on Wednesday and Thursday, according to the council. And about 100 schools will be at least partially closed over the next two days in Buckinghamshire, along with 86 schools in Gloucestershire, according to council data.
The Guardian’s Richard Adams and Fiona Harvey have written this timely piece about how the UK’s failure to plan for rising temperatures has left UK’s schools sweltering.
Temperatures could hit 40C today in some parts of England and Wales.
A red weather warning for extreme heat covering an area stretching from London to Swansea and Somerset to Birmingham was issued by the Met Office from 9am on Wednesday to 9pm on Thursday.
During the peak of the heatwave on these two days, the temperature could come close to the UK’s all-time high of 40.3C, measured in Lincolnshire in July 2022.
The latest heatwave is also expected to surpass the record for June of 35.6C set in Hampshire in 1976.
Here’s a video showing Wednesday’s forecast for the UK from the Met Office, according to an update before midnight.
Some low cloud is possible to start the day but this will clear quickly to bring wall-to-wall blue skies for many. It is going to be an exceptionally hot day with both amber and red extreme heat warnings in places.
The temperatures in some parts of the UK did not drop below 20C overnight.
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Opening summary
Europe is braced for another day of an unprecedented heatwave that has smashed records in many countries.
Italy’s health ministry has declared a red heatwave alert in 16 cities for Wednesday, including Milan and Rome, and in the UK, temperatures are expected to reach 40C in some areas.
The extreme weather is being driven by atmospheric and circulation patterns that keep hot air trapped in place for days, causing the mercury to slowly rise, with these factors exacerbated by global heating, experts say.
The UK is braced for record-breaking temperatures, with schools to close and people urged not to travel. Temperatures could hit 40C on Wednesday and Thursday in some parts of England and Wales and a red weather warning for extreme heat is in place covering an area stretching from London to Swansea and Somerset to Birmingham.
On Tuesday, France registered its hottest day on record as 40 people across the country were confirmed to have drowned while swimming in unsupervised areas over the last few days.
More than 90% of the French population is exposed to extreme heat – government data shows – with temperatures of 39C to 41C expected on Wednesday from Brittany to the Paris region, and in much of the south-west.
From Wednesday until at least Friday, central and southern Netherlands will be under a code orange for extreme heat. Anyone living in Amsterdam with a city pass may swim for free in six city outdoor pools, while the national rail company will run fewer trains on a number of routes from Wednesday due to the expected heat.
In the coming days, the heatwave is expected to extend into eastern Europe.
Poland’s weather service issued high-level heat warnings for the western part of the country from Thursday to Saturday, forecasting temperatures could break records.
Croatia’s popular Adriatic coast was also put under red alert for Friday and Saturday.
Hungary, already under a second-level heat alert, said it was raising that to the maximum level from Saturday to Tuesday as temperatures continued to rise.
