After a few days with relatively milder temperatures of 26C, the weekend will gradually heat up for Monday and Tuesday with temperatures over 35C across much of the UK. The heat is so extreme that the With Office has issued a red warning for the first time, indicating an “exceptionally hot period on Monday and Tuesday”.
Monday and Tuesday we will see a red warning over urban areas in England ranging from Surrey to Manchester and York.
The warning, in effect from midnight Monday to late Tuesday, read: “Exceptional, perhaps record-breaking temperatures are likely to be on Monday and then again on Tuesday. Nights are also likely to be exceptionally warm for the UK, especially in urban areas.
“This is likely to lead to widespread impacts on people and infrastructure.
“It is expected that temperatures will drop from Wednesday.”
jo farrow, netweather.tv forecaster, said on the agency’s website that the heat “already exists over NW Africa and Spain, Portugal,” and will be pushed to Britain.
She wrote: “A cut-off layer will pump the very hot air to the north as our high pressure slides to the east of the UK over the weekend and helps pull the hot air into the UK.
“Spain, Portugal and France already have heat wave warnings. With temperatures in the mid to high 30s and reaching 40C.”
She also added: “There is a good chance of breaking the UK record and a fair chance of reaching 40C.
“It seems to end in the middle of the week, so of a relatively short duration, with showers from the SW and then NW later on Tuesday and in the night of Wednesday to Wednesday.
“If the last heat from eastern Britain clears on Wednesday, there could be severe thunderstorms, but there is a lot of uncertainty.”
The Met Office described the predicted heat coming from France and Spain as “absolutely unprecedented”.
They urged people to take it as a storm warning and consider changing plans.
Bob Ward, the policy director for the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, said, “We could see 1,500 to 2,000 deaths from this one period of heat.”
The government’s Cobra emergency committee met on Thursday to discuss the heat wave, and officials are meeting again over the weekend.