Met Office issues rare red weather warning for Wednesday and Thursday | UK weather

While Met Office forecasters have issued a rare red weather warning for Wednesday and Thursday due to extreme heat and humidity, a red heat health alert has also been issued in England, stating that there is a “life-threatening risk even for the healthy population”.

The weather warning covers an area of ​​England that includes south Wales and London as far west as Swansea, and stretches from midtown Kent to Somerset, as far north-west as Birmingham and as far north-east as south Cambridgeshire.

As the UK braces for dangerously high temperatures, people in these areas have been told to take immediate action to keep themselves safe.

The UK Health Safety Agency has issued a red heat alert for six regions of England.

The West Midlands and East Midlands, the southeast and southwest, London and the east of England are covered from 1am on Wednesday until 11pm on Thursday. This is only the second red heat health warning issued. The first was in July 2022, when temperatures exceeded 40C (104F).

“The region now appears increasingly likely to see a two- to three-day period where maximum temperatures in the shade exceed 37°C, perhaps rising to 38 to 40°C in some locations,” forecasters said. “Heat will also be accompanied by high humidity, increasing the potential for discomfort and health impacts, while very hot and humid nighttime hours will also reduce people’s ability to recover throughout the night.

“There is likely to be significant disruption to daily life and the public should make every effort to take precautions and adapt their daily routines where possible to cope with these temperature levels, which have so far been extremely rare for the UK.”

A serious amber warning in itself also covers almost all of the rest of Wales and much of the rest of England down to Cornwall, Yorkshire and Lancashire.

Red weather warnings, which indicate a high degree of both likelihood and impact on people’s lives, are rare in the UK. This means “dangerous weather is expected and you should take action now, if you haven’t already, to keep yourself and others safe.”

Met Office forecasters say such severe conditions pose a real risk to life, causing “significant disruption to travel, energy supplies and possibly widespread damage to property and infrastructure”.

Bill McGuire, honorary professor of geophysics and climate hazards at University College London, said temperatures above 43 degrees were possible in the UK’s current climate, with heatwaves lasting several days.

But he said the country’s healthcare, energy infrastructure and transportation were “completely not built for these conditions.” “As temperatures above 40 become increasingly common, you can expect thousands of people to sleep on the streets, inadequately insulated homes to become uninhabitable heat traps, widespread power outages due to sagging and broken power cables, transportation chaos to occur due to rails, overhead cables and signaling failure, and emergency and response departments to be overwhelmed by the elderly, very young and vulnerable suffering from overheating.”

Rail and tube services on the Transport for London network will also be disrupted on Tuesday, with overground services such as the Elizabeth line and Overground likely to be worst affected. Rail temperatures are likely to lead to temporary speed restrictions and service disruptions.

Friederike Otto, professor of climate science at Imperial College London, said: “Our first 40C day was supposed to be a wake-up call, but it’s clear someone pressed snooze. Reaching 40C again, and this time in June, would be incredibly worrying.”

“There’s a sad inevitability to all of this, with scientists like me quoting the same quotes year after year. Yes it’s climate change, yes it’s us, no it’s not El Niño. Simply put, we continue on a one-way journey towards a more dangerous future, and it’s time we put on the brakes.”

“Right now, children are struggling to finish their exams in sweltering classrooms, and older people are enduring dangerously hot homes and care facilities with little relief. This heat is not an inconvenience, it’s a growing public health threat. Every heat wave puts lives at risk, and it’s long past time we’ve treated it with the urgency it requires.”

Some schools are closing early this week to prevent the heat from getting worse. These include Kingdown school in Warminster, Wiltshire, where classes will finish at 12.25pm ​​from Monday to Thursday for the “safety and welfare of our pupils and staff”.

Other schools are loosening uniform rules, limiting intensive physical education classes, moving classrooms to cooler areas and providing additional water. Children at Kingsholm C of E primary school in Gloucester, where the school day ends at 1.30pm, have been advised to wear PE kits to school.

Paul Whiteman, general secretary of school leaders’ union NAHT, said: “While there is no legal ‘cap’ for temperature in schools, they will certainly do what they can to reduce the effects of such high temperatures.

“For most people, this will mean making simple adjustments such as limiting time spent in the sun during breaks, providing additional water, making adjustments to uniform expectations where appropriate, and ventilating classrooms as best as possible.

“If hotter summers are to become the norm, as appears to be the case, then the government really needs to take more urgent action to improve and modernize school buildings, including a focus on ventilation and potentially air conditioning.”

The Department for Education does not normally recommend that schools close in hot weather and insists this can generally be managed safely. It recommends sun protection, loosening uniform rules, adapting physical education classes and ventilation.