The Met Office has issued a serious amber weather warning for extreme heat affecting 98 UK areas from midnight on Thursday to midnight on Friday, with a risk of power cuts, water outages, and loss of internet and other essential services.
Extreme Heat Warning Details
The weather experts warned that 'extreme heat' will bring a risk of 'failure' leading to a 'probable loss of power' and other essential services such as water, electricity, gas or mobile phone services. The amber warning states: 'Hot and humid weather is expected to continue through the middle of the week, with exceptionally warm temperatures both day and night. Population-wide adverse health effects are likely to be experienced, not limited to those most vulnerable to extreme heat, leading to potential serious illness or danger to life.'
Temperatures and Duration
The Met Office amber warning adds: 'Very hot weather will continue in general until at least Thursday across the highlighted region, although some variations from place to place and day by day are likely. Temperatures by day are widely expected to exceed 30 Celsius, with the hottest areas potentially peaking around 38-40 Celsius within the embedded red warning. Overnight, temperatures are unlikely to fall much lower than high teens Celsius, and some places will not fall below low 20s Celsius. These high temperatures will also be accompanied by high humidity. Cooler conditions may begin to become established from the west following this period, but confidence is low.'
Safety Advice
In its advice, the Met Office added: 'Keep yourself safe whilst enjoying the water in this weather by following these simple steps: enter the water gradually, avoiding jumping or diving straight in, to reduce your risk of cold-water shock, go to a lifeguarded beach or a supervised swimming area, and, if you, or anyone else, get into difficulty in the water, float on your back.' Regarding power cuts, the Met Office advised: 'People cope better with power cuts when they have prepared for them in advance. It’s easy to do; consider gathering torches and batteries, a mobile phone power pack and other essential items.'
Affected Areas
The full list of 98 UK areas affected by the power cuts warning includes: East Riding of Yorkshire, North Lincolnshire, North Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, West Yorkshire, Herefordshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Stoke-on-Trent, Telford and Wrekin, Warwickshire, West Midlands Conurbation, Worcestershire, Blaenau Gwent, Bridgend, Caerphilly, Cardiff, Carmarthenshire, Ceredigion, Conwy, Denbighshire, Flintshire, Gwynedd, Isle of Anglesey, Merthyr Tydfil, Monmouthshire, Neath Port Talbot, Newport, Pembrokeshire, Powys, Rhondda Cynon Taf, Swansea, Torfaen, Vale of Glamorgan, Wrexham, Bath and North East Somerset, Bournemouth Christchurch and Poole, Bristol, Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Gloucestershire, North Somerset, Plymouth, Somerset, South Gloucestershire, Swindon, Torbay, Wiltshire, Blackburn with Darwen, Blackpool, Cheshire East, Cheshire West and Chester, Greater Manchester, Halton, Lancashire, Merseyside, Warrington, Bracknell Forest, Brighton and Hove, Buckinghamshire, East Sussex, Greater London, Hampshire, Isle of Wight, Kent, Medway, Milton Keynes, Oxfordshire, Portsmouth, Reading, Slough, Southampton, Surrey, West Berkshire, West Sussex, Windsor and Maidenhead, Wokingham, Bedford, Cambridgeshire, Central Bedfordshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Luton, Norfolk, Peterborough, Southend-on-Sea, Suffolk, Thurrock, Derby, Derbyshire, Leicester, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, and Rutland.
