Vistula river in Warsaw hits record low amid severe heatwave
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
BBC News
23 minutes ago
- BBC News
Severn Trent urges careful water use during dry spell as rivers and reservoirs run low
Severn Trent is urging its customers to be "mindful of their water use" after a dry spring and hot said most counties in its area saw only half their average rainfall last month and in Staffordshire it had been as little as 37%.As a result, the firm said there was less water in reservoirs and rivers and while there was no plan for a hosepipe ban yet, it remained an Larner, a spokesperson for Severn Trent Water, said: "Everyone can play a part in stopping that from happening." At the end of May, a drought was declared in north west England and Severn Trent said its reservoirs were at 71% of their normal reservoir, which supplies the north Staffordshire area, is at 56%.Mr Larner suggested people take simple measures like turning the tap off when they brush their teeth, taking shorter showers and fixing leaky taps."We've got eight million customers and if they all followed these tips we wouldn't have any issues," he said. Mr Larner also advised people not to water their garden every day in the hot weather and said dry plants would soon bounce back when it Trent covers a huge area, including mid Wales, Gloucestershire, Shropshire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire, parts of Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent, Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Warwickshire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and firm said it had been able to reduce its own leaks by 16% over the past five years and the company said it was "hugely important that we are all water wise so there's always enough to go round".Staffordshire had seen some of the biggest increases in water-use during June, especially in Stoke-On-Trent, Stafford and Leek, it Larner said one of the most significant ways of saving water was keeping a jug of water in the fridge, to save having to run the tap to get the water cold. Follow BBC Stoke & Staffordshire on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram.
The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
Mapped: Where the third UK heatwave of the summer will hit
Britons are set to bask in the third heatwave of the summer later this week, forecasters have said. Temperatures could rise into the low 30s towards the end of the week and the heat is forecast to remain at night, with 'tropical nights' set to ruin sleep, the Met Office said. It follows a weekend of cooler air, cloud and rain in most of England, and a yellow warning for thunderstorms in the east of the country on Sunday. Marco Petagna, senior meteorologist at the Met Office, said temperatures are expected to climb steadily this week, with Wednesday likely to be the point when they 'start to reach the thresholds of 25 to 28 degrees, depending on where you are.' While these temperatures meet the criteria for a heatwave, Mr Petagna said: 'you need three days at those temperatures for it to be able to be called a technical heatwave,' meaning an official heatwave is unlikely to be declared before Friday. By the end of the week, he said, conditions will continue to heat up, with Friday and Saturday potentially seeing highs of '30 degrees, perhaps just nudging into the low 30s.' He also warned that the weekend could bring rising humidity and warmer nights, making conditions 'more uncomfortable by night.' Yet the duration of the hot spell remains difficult to gauge, and there are uncertainties about just how high temperatures will rise. It also appears as though the UK will avoid the stifling weather of the high 30s and low 40s seen in the Mediterranean. Mr Petagna added it is uncertain how long the hot spell will last into next week, with forecast models offering mixed signals. 'It's a bit of a question mark going through the weekend [and] early next week,' he said. Some models suggest the heat may ease off while others 'keep the heat going'. For now, it appears likely that the hot weather will persist into next weekend, particularly in southern parts of the UK, where temperatures 'could again certainly get into the low 30s in a few spots.' Mr Petagna also warned of 'very high pollen and very high UV levels' over the coming days. However, he noted the UK has so far avoided the extreme temperatures seen elsewhere in Europe, adding: 'We've managed to escape some of the very highest temperatures... seen across Spain and Portugal... where it has reached the mid-40s.'
The Guardian
8 hours ago
- The Guardian
‘Like working in a volcano': stories from six countries in Europe on a day of extreme heat
Hundreds of millions of people across Europe suffered an extreme heatwave this week, with temperatures smashing records as the continent sweltered. With the human-caused climate emergency pushing the mercury ever higher, early in the summer Europe is experiencing troubling temperatures. From an Italian chef who works in a 60C kitchen to a homeless Dutch man given shelter in a basement, here is the story of how people across Europe coped, told over a single day this past week: Ruth Michaelson Onur Yıldırım woke up early on Tuesday morning and had a cold shower. If he starts the day any later, or without the shower, he'll be 'tired, depressed, and sweaty' all day. With a 12-hour shift of taxi driving ahead of him, he wanted to get on the road quickly. The temperature was already above 20C, and by the end of the day, Turkish firefighters across the country would have fought back multiple wildfires. Yıldırım is lucky – his car has functioning air conditioning, and many of his customers expect he'll use it. But he knows from previous summers that weeks of extreme temperature changes throughout the day can make him sick. Lorenzo Tondo In the searing heart of inland Sicily, Luigi Randazzo, 47, a sous-chef at a restaurant was plating a dish of mussels. 'I was working next to the kettle, where the thermometer read 60 degrees,' he said. 'The fryer was on. So was the oven. It felt like working inside a volcano.' While diners waited in the cool comfort of air conditioning, Randazzo moved from burner to burner in the kitchen, clad in a chef's uniform soaked with sweat. 'It felt like someone had thrown a bucket of water in my face,' he said. 'We have an air conditioner in the kitchen, but it's completely useless when all the machines are running.' In 2021, temperatures in Sicily hit a record 48.8C (119.8F). Randazzo works in the part of the island where the desert is slowly advancing across the countryside, and where, in the last six months of 2023, just 150mm of rain fell. On Tuesday, Randazzo said he was dreaming of going home and taking an ice-cold shower. But the lunch service had just begun. ''My legs were trembling with exhaustion. But you know at that moment you can't stop – not even for a second,' he added. 'That hour felt like an entire summer.' Senay Boztas It was early afternoon in Amsterdam, and Karim Taif, 46, tried to escape the heat at a shelter for homeless people in the city. 'It's cool here and a good place,' said Taif. The well-known shelter, called De Kloof, is in the basement of a historic canal house and is open until 6pm to offer shade, showers, refreshments and sunscreen to the homeless community. For the first time, the city now has a 'summer heat ruling' extending the opening hours of shelters. Taif, who was born in Morocco, grew up in Amsterdam and once worked as a barman in Switzerland. But he struggled to find housing in the Netherlands after returning in 2021 and in October, he said, he crept into a boat tied to a dock. He was found by the owner, but they agreed to let him stay. 'In the winter, it is very cold and in the summer it is so hot, you have to get out of it very early,' said Taif. 'Everything is getting hotter and hotter,' said Taif, smoking a cigarette in the garden of the shelter. 'The south of Europe is drying up … and it feels like the Sahara is moving ever closer.' Ajit Niranjan Sven, 58, had felt the heat creep up over the last two weeks as he rewired a telecommunications box. By Tuesday afternoon, it had hit 33C, and would rise to a sweltering 37C the following day. 'I've set this up to meet my needs,' he said from under a bright green umbrella. 'I've got a coolbox, I avoid working under the blazing sun, and I put a cap on when it hits. Otherwise, it's a case of not moving too fast.' German employees do not have a legal right to take time off work in the heat but bosses have a duty of care to their workers. This can mean setting up fans in offices or setting up shade on construction sites. 'For me, the heat is normal,' said Sven, 'but you do have to do things differently.' Jon Henley Built of cast iron and glass in 1866, a couple of decades before the Eiffel Tower, the Marché St Quentin is the largest covered food market in Paris. It was designed to be light and airy in all seasons, but not for 39.3C – which is what the nearby Lariboisière weather station recorded at 5pm on Tuesday. 'It was inhumane, really brutal,' said Sahra Baadache, 27, one of the market's three cheesemongers. 'A sauna. A steam bath. St Quentin is basically a greenhouse and there's no way of ventilating or cooling it down. It was 42C in here by mid-afternoon. People really suffered. Stallholders who live nearby were going home for cold showers.' Cheese and heat do not mix; textures and flavours change irreversibly. Baadache did what she could to save her 150-odd varieties, bringing out only a small fraction of her stock and covering up her two refrigerated display cabinets to keep the cold in. 'They survived, just,' she said. 'But I was a wreck – sweating about my cheeses, and sat behind two fridge motors generating even more heat.' And, of course, there were no customers: 'No one came. So it was like a double punishment.' Ashifa Kassam On Tuesday evening, as most tourists wandered through Madrid's Plaza Mayor wearing as little clothing as possible, David, 40, climbed into a furry gorilla suit, layered with a Real Madrid shirt. 'I'm soaked through with sweat,' the street performer said. 'It's even hotter inside the suit, as the inner layer is canvas.' Originally from Peru, he had started the job three months ago, perspiring his way through Spain's hottest June on record and now the first heatwave of the summer. 'I make enough to eat,' he said. While the beating sun meant most tourists were huddled under the shade cast by the plaza's arcade or under the parasols and misting systems of the plaza's restaurants and cafes, Daniel hovered in the middle of the shadeless plaza, aiming to attract attention. Every now and then, he was successful, with a trickle of tourists darting towards him just long enough to snap a photo. As temperatures climbed this week, he had done what he could to mitigate the heat, shifting his start time to early evening in the hope that the one- or two-degree drop in temperatures would offer some respite. A quick cold shower, before and after his shift, had also become a necessity. 'I play football, so that helps my body deal with the heat of the summer,' he said. 'But a job's a job – I have no other choice.'
