31.90C! THE HOTTEST DAY YET IN WALES
TEMPERATURES hit 31.90C (89.40F) in Wales yesterday – making it the UK’s hottest day of the year so far as the heatwave continues.
Porthmadog, Gwynedd, beat the 30.70C (87.30F) recorded in Rostherne in Cheshire on Tuesday.
The hot weather looks as though it is here to stay, the Met Office said.
“Over the next few days the high pressure will remain so there will be blue skies across the UK and that will last certainly into the weekend,” said a spokesman. “We may see some thunderstorms on Sunday or Monday, but nothing’s certain.
“But we can expect these sorts of high temperatures to be reached certainly until Saturday.”
After a very dry month there is still no rain on the horizon, particularly if the potential thunderstorms fail to materialise this weekend.
At 310C-plus Porthmadog was hotter than Madrid (300C), Dakar, Senegal (290C), Rome (280C) and Tunis (270C).
In 2016 a heatwave was caused by the “Spanish Plume” – a mass of warm air travelling from Spain – but this time it is “home grown”, says the Met Office.
“As there are no clouds it is building up,” a spokeswoman explained. “We had the longest day of the year so the sun is at its strongest. It is just dry and very sunny with the heat building up. We had a very similar spell last summer about this time. It was June 17 to 21, where temperatures exceeded 300C for five days in a row.”
But it is a world away from 14 weeks ago, when Wales was under deep snow. In March schools were closed, roads were shut and communities pulled together to help emergency services get on with their job.
It started on St David’s Day and was met with a red weather warning – leaving shop shelves empty, burst water mains and temperatures as low as -60C. In St Athans, in the Vale of
Glamorgan, 21cm of snow was recorded in one night, while in Tredegar, Blaenau Gwent, firefighters had to dig residents out of their houses amid 20-foot drifts.
The reason for the unusual cold snap was a rare North Pole phenomenon known as a polar vortex – causing a mass of cold air from the North and South Poles to split and move from Siberia to the UK.
Bonnie Diamond, forecaster at the Met Office, said: “Because of our climate we can see quite cold winters with a lot of snow and high pressure like we’ve had over the last few weeks, where we can get warmer days. This year it just happens to be a cold, prolonged winter and this weather back to back.”
The Met Office’s heat-health watch alert is currently at level two, meaning social and healthcare services are at the ready to reduce harm from a potential heatwave.
Health experts said the over-65s, young children and those with health conditions are the most vulnerable in hot weather, and encouraged people to look out for one another.
And that’s what bosses at civil engineering company Robert McAlpine did yesterday for employees working on Cardiff city centre’s new HMRC development when they hired an ice-cream van to park outside the site.
One worker, Nicky Jewitt, said: “It’s good – great for morale and team spirit. I’m going to get a fruit lolly.”
Project manager Clare Gallagher said: “We bought ice creams and lollies for all the site operatives and staff in recognition of their commitment to safety and the great progress being made.
“This week has been particularly challenging with the hot weather and a thank-you goes a long way.”
The RSPCA also called on pet owners to keep a close eye on their animals in the heat after receiving 625 calls UKwide about animals in hot environments between June 11 and 24 – the majority about dogs in hot cars.
A spokeswoman said: “(We’re receiving) almost two calls every hour, despite the charity’s key advice being to call the police on 999 in the event of an emergency.”
Network Rail’s extreme weather action teams are being activated across the UK to monitor “vulnerable locations”. Network Rail said hot weather can cause the steel on rail lines to expand and in some cases buckle, causing travel disruption. Slower trains exert lower forces on the track, reducing the likelihood of buckling.