Russia is facing a heat wave: Siberia is nearly 40 degrees, and Moscow has not been this hot in a hundred years

Russians are facing a heat wave. Meteorologists said Moscow’s century-old daily record fell for two days in a row, with the Moskva River, which flows through the metropolis, reaching temperatures similar to the Black Sea. Temperatures in many other cities also climbed above 35 degrees Celsius. According to media reports, temperatures are falling across the country, from the Pacific coast through Siberia to parts of Europe.

photo: TASR/AP, Alexander Zemrynichenko

A woman cools off in a fountain during a heat wave in Moscow, Tuesday, July 2, 2024. Extremely high temperatures were felt across much of Russia on both continents on Wednesday. In Moscow, temperatures reached 32.5 degrees Celsius. Such hot weather has not been recorded here on July 3 for more than a century. In the village of Mamakhan in southeastern Siberia, the temperature even reached 38.7 degrees.

In Moscow, where temperatures can drop to minus 40 degrees Celsius during the legendary winter, the temperature was measured at 32.7 degrees Celsius on Wednesday, half a degree higher than the previous record for this day measured in 1917, Reuters quoted the meteorological center as saying. Phobos. A day earlier, the city broke a record set in 1890, according to Roman Vilfand, director of the Interfax Hydrometeorological Center. He also noted that due to the warm night, the water temperature of the Moscow River rose to 24-25 degrees, closer to the water temperature measured in places such as the Black Sea resort of Sochi.

The hot weather has led to a sharp increase in demand for air conditioning and fans. Muscovites also consumed record amounts of ice cream and cooled down with cold drinks. Water was distributed to passengers in the metro and on many trains.

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Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin called on residents of the metropolitan area with more than 20 million inhabitants to protect themselves and not go out during the hottest time of the day. Even on Thursday, the temperature is expected to rise to more than 30 degrees. He also warned that thunderstorms and hail are expected on Friday, and the temperature will drop sharply. However, high temperatures of 30 degrees are expected to appear again as early as Monday.

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Elsewhere, however, the extreme heat that broke out five days ago shows no sign of cooling down until at least this weekend. According to the Moscow Times website, Russia and its Crimea region broke about 40 daily temperature records on Tuesday alone. The highest temperature was recorded at 38.7 degrees Celsius in the village of Mamakhan in the Irkutsk region in southeastern Siberia, and at 35.9 degrees Celsius in the Krasnodar region in the southern European part of Russia.

Meteorologists believe that early July this year was the warmest month in the entire period of global warming. The heat was even worse than in early July 2010, when Russia experienced one of the deadliest sea waves in history. The hot and dry weather also contributed to the spread of fires in Siberia and the Far East.