The weather warning covers from Swansea to London and runs from Salisbury up to Birmingham with areas outside this area under an Amber warning.
In force on Wednesday and Thursday, forecasters are saying they expect maximum temperatures to exceed 37C, perhaps rising to 38 to 40C and accompanied by high humidity, exacerbating the potential for discomfort and health impacts, with very warm and humid night times also reducing the ability for people to recover overnight.
The MET Office warning includes the line that: 'Significant disruption to daily life is likely and the public should take every effort to make precautions and adapt their daily routines where possible to cope with these levels of heat, which up to now have been extremely rare for the UK with with substantial disruption to travel, energy supplies and possibly widespread damage to property and infrastructure'.
Friederike Otto, a professor of climate science at Imperial College London, said: 'Our first 40C day was supposed to be a wakeup call, but clearly someone hit snooze. Hitting 40C again, and in June this time, would be incredibly alarming. There’s a sad inevitability to all of this, with scientists like me trotting out the same quotes year after year. Yes it’s climate change, yes it’s us, no it’s not El Niño. Simply put, we remain on a one-way trip towards a more dangerous future, and it’s time we hit the brakes'.
Sadly, the only people who could have hit the brakes have continually failed to do so for decades and this is the inevitable outcome of our own sheer stupidity.
