Mercury hits record high in United Kingdom : As Heathrow records 40.2C, Britain declares a national emergency

Members of the Australian cabaret and circus troupe cool down at a fountain on the Southbank in London on Tuesday.

AP/PTI

Amit Roy   |   TT  |  London   |    20.07.22  : London, where the temperature at Heathrow was 40.2C at 12.50pm (5.20pm IST) on Tuesday, is hotter than Calcutta. The previous UK record of 38.7C, set in Cambridge in 2019, has been broken. And the mercury was continuing to climb. The temperature hit 40.3C, a new high, at Coningsby in Lincolnshire, at 4pm, the Met Office said The government has declared a national emergency, saying lives could be lost. The TV weather maps of Britain, which is supposed to be a green and pleasant land with gentle rain and a temperate climate, are just bright red.

BBC Weather’s Simon King said: “For meteorologists, exceeding records by a margin of 2 or 3 degrees is a staggering thought when historical records were only broken by fractions of a degree.” The Met Office also confirmed that Monday night was the warmest on record in Britain, with temperatures not falling below 25C (77F) in many areas of England and Wales. The highest overnight minimum in the UK on Monday night was 25.9C (78.6F) at Emley Moor in West Yorkshire, while it was 25.8C (78.4F) at Kenley in Croydon, South London. Given the circumstances, it is probably slightly perverse of me to think nostalgically of my childhood days in Patna.

In the summer we walked to St Xavier’s School next to Gandhi Maidan at dawn, and our ayah shepherded us back in a rickshaw when lessons ended at 10am. If we were good we were rewarded with a one anna ice lolly. On very special occasions it was a four-anna chocolate ice cream. When I went to the supermarket on Monday in London, there had been a run on icecreams. At Tesco, there was one tub left. Dawn here is cool, as it was in India. The first thing I did was take a jug of water to the thirsty dahlias. Thames Water was said there could soon be a hose-pipe ban.

Network Rail has cancelled trains and advised people not to travel. In any case, lines have buckled in the heat. Schools have been shut, with teachers claiming learning was impossible in sweltering classrooms. At Luton airport, the runaway melted, leading to flights being suspended. Hospitals cancelled appointments and non-urgent operations as operating theatres “turned into ovens”. Royal Mail workers were told to return to sorting offices with undelivered mail amid fears they would fall ill. Experts recommended avoiding the beach and holding off exercising until the extreme heat has passed. Transport secretary Grant Shapps told people across Britain today to “apply common sense” and “depending on the nature of your journey and reason for it, you might want to consider rearranging your day around it”.

He admitted the UK’s infrastructure “could not cope” with the extreme weather — as the country braced for 43C (109F) highs.  Oxford Circus station was evacuated over a “smoking escalator”. Those who risk a journey on the London Underground hear the repeated advice: “In this hot weather don’t forget to take a bottle of water with you.” The heatwave also reminded the distinguished art historian Prof. Partha Mitter of summer days in Calcutta and how a bullock cart, laden with mangoes, used to come to 53B Harish Mukherjee Road in Bhowanipore “where my family had lived for generations”. “I am writing my memoirs — and I remember the smell of mangoes,” he told The Telegraph. He went to school at the Mitra Institute at 6am in the summer, and braved the heat when he began at Presidency College in 1954.

“We didn’t think of the heat as an emergency. It was part of life. Here, it’s a big thing because they haven’t had anything like this before.” Despite being in poor health, “I went out yesterday to do my shopping”. He also remembered that “when I did my book, Art and nationalism (in colonial India, 1850-1922), I literally traipsed hundreds of miles in India in the summer heat to go chasing sources”. 

The London Fire Brigade declared a major incident after a surge in fires, including grassland blazes, across the capital, while there has been power disruption in other parts of England. More than 350 firefighters are tackling the fires across London. The BBC’s weather correspondent, Nick Miller, set the unprecedented temperatures into perspective: “Several weeks ago when some computerised weather forecasts began to indicate that the UK could see temperatures reach 40C for the first time, to be honest, it was hard for many of us to believe. “Since then, the same forecasts maintained the possibility of hitting or exceeding 40C and others joined them until what seemed improbable became probable. “There is an element of shock at reaching 40C in the UK but really no one should be surprised. Scientists told us this day would come because of climate change and now it’s arrived.”