“In preparation for a potential heatwave this summer, people need to make sure they have a fair weather friend they can call on for aid, officials advise”.
The Met Office are apparently not quite sure yet whether we’re actually going to get a serious disaster-level heatwave like we had in (was it 2006?), but they do think we’re definitely going to get a hot summer.
If we do have a full scale heatwave, fortunately the Department of Health has published a Heatwave Plan containing lots of top advice about how beat the blazing sun:
- Paint buildings and surrounding walls white to reflect heat
- Plant small trees and shrubs around buildings
- Replace metal blinds with curtains with white linings to reflect heat outwards where possible.
Notwithstanding the ludicrousness of the suggestion that everybody runs out to their nearest B&Q for a big tub of white paint to slap all over their unrendered brickwork, or the injunction to pursuade the council to plant a wall of Leylandii around the nation’s one remaining block of council flats, do they have any idea of how much curtains actually cost these days ?
All in all, I’m actually quite reminded of Protect and Survive.
I saw this story and was quite puzzled about their definition of heatwave. Ok, hotter than usual, but surely lots of countries cope fine at 32 degrees?
This year I experienced 45 in Adelaide, the same week as the Australian bushfires. Now that was frightening – knowing that just standing still outside, in the shade, was overheating me; and that air conditioning is pretty much a necessity for the whole city and people without it were dying.
So hopefully you guys will be fine…
My last definition of a heatwave weas back on 1959 when it was pleasantly hot for about two months.
Now it would be nice even to be warm – presume this government’s definition of a heatwave is 2 hours when the temperature rises about freezing.
however it has been hot for three days now – break out the white paint and the suncream and prepare for an epidemic of skin cancers!!