A part of Western Europe was suffocated on Saturday, July 16
Although the peak of the heat wave seemed to have passed in Spain, the State Meteorological Agency (Aemet) warned that it will be on Monday when temperatures will drop a little, which this Saturday will continue above 40 ºC in many regions and up to 44 ºC in specific areas.
In Portugal, only the southern region of the Algarve was spared from being on heat alert. In other parts of the country, 42 ºC was expected.
Further north in Europe, in Britain, a crisis committee made up of government ministers is due to meet on Saturday after the national weather agency issued the first “red alert” for extreme heat, warning of a “risk to life”.
The Met Office predicts that in the south of England temperatures could reach between Monday and Tuesday for the first time 40 ° C, beating the country’s record of 38.7 ° C dating from 2019.
The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, advised Londoners not to use public transport, except in cases of absolute necessity and some schools announced that they will remain closed in the south of England as long as the thermometers remain so high.
This is the second heat wave to hit Europe in less than a month, phenomena that are becoming more frequent and intense fueled by climate change, according to scientists.
A part of Western Europe was suffocated on Saturday, July 16, by a heat wave that has caused devastating fires and threatens to cause record temperatures this weekend and the beginning of next week.
The fires were especially worrisome in Spain, where a major highway linking Madrid to the Portuguese border was cut off early Saturday by a fire burning in Extremadura (southwest).
“We are going to proceed with the opening of a lane” in the 20 km that remain closed of the A5 motorway “to facilitate the transfer of people who have been held for a long time,” Nieves Villar, general director of Civil Protection of Extremadura, told reporters at noon on Saturday.
After a complicated night, the hundreds of firefighters and land and air means managed to “stabilize” that fire in Extremadura, which threatened the Monfragüe National Park, a natural area protected by its biodiversity, Villar said.
Dozens of fires continued to burn this Saturday in Spain, under a heat wave with extreme temperatures for almost a week, one of the most worrying in the Sierra de Mijas (Andalusia, south), which forced the preventive eviction of more than 3,000 people, according to local authorities.
