Headline

Deadly European Heat Wave Drags On

 Europe

A local resident fights a forest fire with a shovel during a wildfire in Tabara, north-west Spain, Tuesday, July 19, 2022. Firefighters battled wildfires raging out of control in Spain and France as Europe wilted under an unusually extreme heat wave that authorities in Madrid blamed for hundreds of deaths. (Credit: AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)

Brutal heat has killed more than 1,700 people over the past week in Spain and Portugal alone, but the ultimate death toll of this week's extreme heat, there and across Europe, will be much higher. The UK hit 104.36°F (40.2°C) at Heathrow on Tuesday, "absolutely obliterat[ing]" the previous all-time record, set just three years ago, by 2.7°F (1.5°C). “Even as a climate scientist who studies this stuff, this is scary,” University of Reading professor Hannah Cloke told The Guardian. While the hottest peak of the heat wave may have passed yesterday, the WMO expects temperatures to stay above normal through the middle of next week.

(Death toll: Axios, Reuters, Democracy Now; UK Heat: (The Guardian, Axios, Washington Post $, New York Times $, Reuters, The Guardian, Wall Street Journal $, CBS, Axios, Washington Post $, AP, The Verge, The Guardian, ABC, Politico EU; Forecast: Reuters)