UK Met Office extends “rare” extreme heat alert

LONDON, July 12– The Met Office of the United Kingdom, the country’s national weather service, on Tuesday extended the rare Amber weather warning for extreme heat for parts of England and Wales. The UK could see its first-ever national heatwave emergency, a level-four emergency, The Telegraph has reported. “There’s a possibility of a level four heatwave,” a…

LONDON, July 12 (Xinhua) — The Met Office of the United Kingdom (UK), the country’s national weather service, on Tuesday extended the rare Amber weather warning for extreme heat for parts of England and Wales.

The alert for “exceptionally high temperatures,” which had initially been issued for Sunday, has now been extended to next Monday, it said in a statement.

In the previous alert issued on Monday, the Met Office warned of likely adverse health effects for the public, not just limited to those most vulnerable to extreme heat, as temperatures could be in excess of 35 degrees Celsius in the southeast, and more widely around 32 degrees Celsius within the warning area.

The UK could see its first-ever national heatwave emergency, a level-four emergency, The Telegraph has reported. Such an emergency is declared when the hot weather is so extreme that “illness and death may occur among the fit and healthy” as well as the most vulnerable.

“There’s a possibility of a level four heatwave,” a spokesperson for the UK Health Security Agency told The Telegraph. “If it gets above 40 degrees Celsius, then it is likely to be a level four heatwave for the first time.”

The highest temperature recorded in the UK was 38.7 degrees Celsius at Cambridge Botanic Garden in July 2019. A Met Office forecaster has said there is a 30-percent chance for the temperature on Sunday to beat that record. Enditem