‘Hell is coming': week-long heatwave begins across Europe

Authorities have urged children and older people to stay indoors and issued severe warnings against dehydration and heatstroke as an unprecedented week-long heatwave begins its advance across continental Europe.

Tourists in Rome drink from a public fountain
 during the unusually early summer heatwave.

Meteorologists said temperatures would reach or even exceed 40C from Spain to Switzerland as hot air was sucked up from the Sahara by the combination of a storm stalling over the Atlantic and high pressure over central Europe.High humidity meant it would feel like 47C, experts warned. “El infierno [hell] is coming,” tweeted the TV meteorologist Silvia Laplana in Spain, where the AEMET weather service forecast temperatures of 42C by Thursday in the Ebro, Tagus, Guadiana and Guadalquivir valleys and warned of an “extreme risk” of forest fires.

Read the story from The Guardian by Jon Henley - “‘Hell is coming': week-long heatwave begins across Europe.”