Britain sets record-high temperature mark, climbing over 40 C for 1st time
CBC
Britain shattered its record for highest temperature ever registered Tuesday as part of a heat wave that has seized swaths of Europe — and the national weather forecaster predicted it would get hotter still in a country ill prepared for such extremes.
The U.K. Met Office registered a provisional reading of 40.2 C at Heathrow Airport — breaking the record of 39.1 C set in Charlwood, England just an hour earlier, with several hours of daylight still left.
Before Tuesday, the highest temperature recorded in Britain was 38.7 C (101.7 F), a record just set in 2019.
Millions of Britons woke from the country's warmest-ever night. The Met Office said provisional figures showed the temperature remained above 25 C overnight in parts of the country for the first time.
Met Office forecaster Rachel Ayers said Tuesday's highs would be "unprecedented."
A huge chunk of England, from London in the south to Manchester and Leeds in the north, is under the country's first warning of "extreme" heat, meaning there is danger of death even for healthy people.
Britain's Supreme Court closed to visitors after a problem with the air conditioning forced it to move hearings online. The British Museum planned to close early. Many public buildings, including hospitals, don't have air conditioning, a reflection of how unusual such extreme heat is in the country better known for rain and mild temperatures.
The temperature on Monday reached 38.1 C at Santon Downham in eastern England, just shy of the highest-ever temperature recorded.
Average July temperatures in the U.K. range from a daily high of 21 C to a nighttime low of 12 C, and few homes or small businesses have air conditioning.
Many people coped with the heat wave by staying put. Road traffic was down from its usual levels on Monday. Trains ran at low speed out of concern for buckled rails, or did not run at all.
London's Luton Airport had to close its runway because of heat damage. The airport said Tuesday it was "fully operational," but cautioned that a number of train routes leading to the city were not in service due to the heat.
London's Kings Cross Station, one of the country's busiest rail hubs, was empty on Tuesday, with no trains on the busy east-coast line connecting the capital to the north and Scotland.
Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said Britain's transport infrastructure, some of it dating from Victorian times, "just wasn't built to withstand this type of temperature — and it will be many years before we can replace infrastructure with the kind of infrastructure that could."
From Britain's weather agency, at 1:30 p.m. local time:
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