Europe facing second heatwave bringing 46C inferno as wildfires continue to burn
A second heatwave is set to sear its way through Europe today and tomorrow and could push temperatures as high as 46C
The initial "Cerberus" weather front - named after the three-headed dog that guards the entrance Hell in Dante Allighieri's Inferno - is to be followed by even deadlier heat delivered by the "Charon" heatwave.
Charon features in the same book penned by the Italian literary giant as the ferryman who carries damned souls across the River Styx to hell proper. The blistering temperatures are set to hit Catania in Sicily hardest, making it the hottest place on the continent where that lethal high of 46C will be seen.
Turkey and Greece - which is currently in the grips of a devastating wildfire - are also set to swelter as the mercury breaks into the 40s.
A woman splashes herself with water in a desperate attempt to cool down amid 42C temperatures (Amer Ghazzal/REX/Shutterstock)Last week, the Met Office told The Mirror that Charon won't reach the UK - which is currently being battered by another type of weather front - namely dreary rain.
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Met Office spokesman Stephen Dixon told the Mirror: "Anyone hoping to see warmer weather in the UK might be disappointed. The European heat isn’t expected to have any direct impact on the UK in the current forecast period.
The UK is experiencing a different weather front, namely drizzly rain (PA)"The southern shift of the jet steam - which is a ribbon of winds high up in the atmosphere that drives much of our weather - is helping to develop high pressure across southern Europe and northern Africa and are bringing some extremely high temperatures for the region, well beyond their usual averages.
"Temperatures could reach into the mid-40s Celsius in some parts of Greece and Turkey and remain very high overnight as well. The focus of the European heat will gradually shift further southeast over the next week and isn’t going to impact the UK."
The initial heatwave, the Cerberus anticyclone, originated over the Saharan desert but pushed north, scorching its way through Italy, Croatia and Greece - some of which suffered hillside razing wildfires.
Charon could bring temperatures as high as 46C (Amer Ghazzal/REX/Shutterstock)
The UK won't get hotter until August, experts say (Geoffrey Swaine/REX/Shutterstock)At the highs expected over the next few days, a number of lethal heat-related changes happen to the human body. At 39-40C - far below Charon's 46C high - the muscles begin to slow down on the command of the brain, leaving the person suffering severe fatigue.
Just a couple of degrees hotter and heat exhaustion becomes likely. At 41C the body starts to shut down, with the upper lethal limit believed to be somewhere between 40 and 50C.
Another huge risk to human life are the wildfires decimating huge swathes of the continent. In Corfu today, entire districts had to be evacuated as the blazes took hold of a second Greek island following dramatic rescues in Rhodes.
An estimated 7,000 to 10,000 British tourists were on the island at the time, with a major evacuation operation underway.
The danger to life warnings has come from Greece's Emergency Communications Service after fire broke out in the northern part of the island of Corfu, ordering people to flee multiple areas.
The Greek government has warned further locations are at "extreme fire risk", including Crete and the region of Attica, which encompasses the entire Athens metropolitan area.
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