Our live coverage has ended. Scroll through the posts below to read more about Europe’s heat wave or follow CNN.com.
Temperatures across much of England will be in the low 20s Celsius tonight.
London’s low will be 23 Celsius (73 degrees Fahrenheit). The warmest July overnight temp on record is 23.3 Celsius (73.9 degrees Fahrenheit). The all-time record for any month is 23.9 Celsius (75 degrees Fahrenheit).
Temperatures will be close to both of these records tonight.
Here’s a look at tonight’s forecast:
Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands recorded their highest temperatures Thursday, according to the Met Office.
Temperatures hit 42.6 Celsius (108.6 degrees Fahrenheit) in Germany. The mercury reached 40.7 Celsius (105.2 degrees Fahrenheit) in the Netherlands and 40.6 Celsius (105.2 degrees Fahrenheit) in Belgium, the Met Office tweeted.
The Met Office tweeted Thursday that temperatures in the UK are starting to dip slightly.
“Temperatures are now starting to dip, so it is unlikely we will have anything higher than 38.1 °C today. If this little bit of cloud hadn’t pushed across the southeast this afternoon, it would have been even hotter,” the tweet said.
Earlier the day, the Met Office noted that temperatures reached 38.1 Celsius (100.5 degrees Fahrenheit) in Cambridge — only the second time temperatures over 100 Fahrenheit have been recorded in the UK.
Read the tweets:
A hail storm rolled through Liverpool during record high temperatures Thursday.
Amanda Brooke, who took a video of her dog Mouse playing in the ice storm, said it was so hot and had been feeding her dog ice cubes earlier in the day.
“She loves throw and catch games and thought it was great fun trying to catch the hail stones,” Brooke said.
Watch the video:
The cool down starts: Liverpool was supposed to hit a high of 31 Celsius (88 degrees Fahrenheit), but things might be cooling down soon.
The Met Office tweeted that thunderstorms are starting to roll into the Kent area from across the English Channel.
A heat wave is gripping Europe and at least 12 countries are experiencing record-breaking temperatures.
Meteorologists say that Europe is on track for the hottest July on record, following the warmest June since records began in 1880.
Here’s what the heat wave looks like:
France
Netherlands
Denmark
Germany
Austria
A British train company is urging people not to travel today after extreme heat caused problems with the tracks.
East Midlands Trains tweeted their trains were “unable to run” on at least one route after overhead lines came down. They also warned of more delays because of speed restrictions and altered train schedules, saying “we advice customers NOT TO TRAVEL today.”
Not only is extreme heat inconvenient for travel, it can also be dangerous.
The temperature of the steel tracks is set to exceed 50 Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit) in and around London, according to Network Rail. When the tracks get this hot, they could buckle.
Britain’s railway tracks are able to cope with up to 27 Celsius (80 degrees Fahrenheit), the average summer rail temperature in the UK.
But air temperatures are forecast to possibly reach a record of 39 Celsius (102 degrees Fahrenheit) in England on Thursday, meaning the steel from the tracks could expand “and rails can bend, flex and, in serious cases, buckle.”
The heat wave hanging over Europe is being caused by a meteorological effect know as an “omega block,” a high pressure area that sits in one place for a long period of time.
The phenomenon is named after the Greek letter Omega (Ω) for the way it changes the jet stream air current in our atmosphere.
A strong omega block has currently settled in over western Europe and is producing a dome over the region, acting like a lid.
This type of block can get stuck in one place for weeks, and, in this case, very hot air from the Sahara Desert in northern Africa is getting trapped under the dome, causing record temperatures.
Forecasters expect that this pattern will slowly shift, allowing the hot air to migrate north into Scandinavia and the Arctic.
The UK’s trade unions are urging businesses to allow flexible working conditions and dress codes amid record-breaking temperatures, according to a statement from the Trade Union Congress (TUC).
The TUC has called on employers to allow staff to come in earlier or stay later to avoid the highest temperatures of the day, and also to lessen the crush during the rush-hour commute.
They also suggested that employees who could should be allowed to work from home.
Other suggestions included allowing staff to relax their workplace dress codes and take frequent breaks, as well as to provide a steady supply of cold drinks.
While there is no law for minimum or maximum working temperatures, as the TUC statement outlined, it did underscore that workplace temperature conditions must be “reasonable” for all.
Temperatures in Paris have now topped 42.6 Celsius (108 degrees Fahrenheit), the hottest-ever in recorded history, Météo-France has confirmed.
The French meteorological service warned that it could still get even hotter in the city.
As Britons try to brave the heat, some retailers are jacking up prices of fans and portable air conditioners by as much as 40%, PriceSpy UK, a price comparison website said.
“Seasonal products do tend to fluctuate in price in line with demand, but it’s clear that retailers are cashing in as people struggle to stay cool,” Vanessa Katsapa, country manager of PriceSpy UK, said in a statement.
“With the price of fans and portable conditioners rising by up to 40% in the space of a month, a little research before purchasing could save shoppers from getting in a sweat.”
The northwestern town of Lingen, in Lower Saxony, has experienced a high of 41.9 Celsius (107 degrees Fahrenheit), according to the German Weather Service.
The new high overtakes yesterday’s record of 40.5 Celsius (105 degrees Fahrenheit), which was measured in western Germany.
Yesterday’s record was set in the German town of Geilenkirchen, according to the national forecasting center, which warned that the coming days would be even warmer.
Temperatures keep rising in Paris.
The new record-high for the city of lights is now 41.7 Celsius (107 degrees Fahrenheit), confirmed by Météo-France.
Many European cities are not designed to deal with the triple-digit temperatures slashing records across the continent this week.
Air conditioning is not particularly common in public buildings and homes across temperate Europe, nor is it widespread on transportation systems. Fewer than 5% of all European households have been air-conditioned, according to a 2017 report.
That means coping with sweltering temperatures takes some creativity.
Authorities have activated emergency plans that include setting up public cooling rooms and extending hours at swimming pools and parks.
The number of online searches for fans and AC has spiked in recent days, as people try to find some relief.
Queen Elizabeth was seen beating the heat wave with a metallic Dyson fan (worth several hundred dollars). Some eagle-eyed observers spotted the cooling device in a photo of the Queen meeting with the newly minted UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson at Buckingham Palace.
Britons are braving the hottest July day the country has ever seen.
Temperatures rose to 36.9 Celsius (98 degrees Fahrenheit) on Thursday in Heathrow, London, home to the country’s busiest airport.
The Met Office, the national weather service, said the UK could still see an all-time record if temperatures climb further.
Have some sympathy for those struggling in the heat in the Netherlands today because the country just broke its temperature record for the second time in two days.
Dutch residents were treated to a sweltering 39.3 C (102.7 F) on Wednesday, breaking a 75-year record, according to the national weather forecasting institute.
That record was surpassed less than day later when a Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute station in Deelen measured a new high of 40 C (104 F) on Thursday at 1:55 p.m. (7:55 a.m. ET). Since then, temperatures have continued to rise – it is now 41.7 C.
Temperatures reached a record-breaking 41C (105.8F) in Paris, according to Météo France, the French national meteorological service.
The previous record was set more than 70 years ago in 1947, when the mercury rose to 40.4C.
Europe is currently battling its second heat wave of the summer with Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands also experiencing their hottest days ever this week.
Heat waves are becoming increasingly more common – thanks to the climate crisis.
“Heat waves are on the rise,” Stefan Rahmstorf, co-chairman of Earth system analysis at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and professor at Potsdam University in Germany, said in a statement.
Rahmstorf connected recent heat waves to climate change by comparing them with 500 years of records.
“The hottest summers in Europe since the year 1500 AD all occurred since the last turn of the century: 2018, 2010, 2003, 2016, 2002,” Rahmstorf said.
Heat waves are some of the most direct manifestations of climate change, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and Europe is certainly not the only place feeling the heat.
Deadly heat waves are going to be a much bigger problem in the coming decades, becoming more frequent and occurring over a much greater portion of the planet because of climate change, according to a study published two summers ago in the journal Nature Climate Change.
Train tracks in the UK could buckle under Thursday’s extreme heat, the owner of most of Britain’s railway network has warned.
The temperature of the steel tracks is set to exceed 50 Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit) in and around London, according to Network Rail.
Trains have been made to run at a slower speed as a precaution.
Britain’s railway tracks are able to cope with up to 27 Celsius (80 degrees Fahrenheit), the average summer rail temperature in the UK.
But air temperatures are forecast to possibly reach a record of 39 Celsius (102 degrees Fahrenheit) in England on Thursday, meaning the steel from the tracks could expand “and rails can bend, flex and, in serious cases, buckle.”
During a visit to a holiday center in Gentilly, near Paris, French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said that “our bodies are not adapted” to high temperatures.
French authorities have installed mist showers, extended hours at public swimming pools, opened cool rooms in designated public buildings and are keeping some parks open all night, to help people cope with the heat.
“What we are doing is reminding our citizens of the messages of caution and telling them that at these times, we try to find comfort when swimming,” Philippe said
But he also warned of the high risk of drowning. More than 40 drowning deaths were registered during the week of the first heat wave peak at the end of June – an unusually high number “closely related to heat waves.”
During the record 2003 European heat wave, more than 14,000 people died in France alone.
French Health Minister Agnès Buzyn said that heat wave plans have improved since 2003, with precautionary measures increasing every year.
“We now have the feeling that in collective places, prevention messages are well known,” Buzyn said.
