The Heat Reaches Another Hot Day as More Hosepipe Bans Begin
The heatwave brings another hot day on Friday, with the Met Office forecasting widely above 30C across England and Wales and up to 35 or 36C in the hottest spots, under yellow heat-health alerts that run until this evening. A cooler, more unsettled spell with thunderstorms is expected to reach the country over the weekend, though the South stays warm into Saturday. Two more hosepipe bans, from Cambridge Water and Affinity Water, took effect from just after midnight, covering parts of the East and South East and adding to restrictions on millions of households.
The danger of this spell has always been its length: England has now sat above the heatwave threshold for well over a week, drying the ground to the point where the wildfire risk is at its highest even as the temperatures near their end. The heat’s quieter toll runs alongside the fire risk — the open-water drownings that spike in every hot spell, the strain on a stretched NHS, and the warm nights that fall hardest on the old and the ill. The spread of hosepipe bans, now reaching customers of Cambridge Water and Affinity Water, is a measure of how a dry winter and a run of heatwaves have drained a system with little slack, reviving the long argument over the water companies’ under-investment. The relief expected over the weekend may arrive as thunderstorms carrying their own risk of flash flooding. Watch today’s peak temperature, how far the weekend break reaches, and whether the Environment Agency moves to declare a drought.