The Czech Republic's all-time temperature record has been broken, with the state meteorological service CHMU recording a temperature of 40.8 degrees Celsius on Saturday.
This figure was recorded in the village of Doksany, in the Ústí nad Labem region, north of Prague. The previous record of 40.4 degrees had been recorded on August 20, 2012 in Central Bohemia.
Meteorologists in neighbouring Slovakia also expect new temperature records to be set.
For days now, temperatures in the Czech Republic have been reaching levels normally only expected in August.
The peak of the heatwave, which has been spreading eastward across Europe, is expected on Sunday.
Events such as a horse race in Karlovy Vary have been cancelled. Hospitals and emergency services have reported an increase in the number of patients.
In the cities, mobile and permanently installed water misters have provided some relief from the heat.
More and more hot days
According to meteorologists, the number and intensity of hot days in the Czech Republic are increasing in the long term. Between 1961 and 1990, there were on average five hot days a year on which the maximum daily temperature reached 30 degrees or more.
Between 1991 and 2020, the average had already risen to 11 days, and in the last 15 years it has been more than 13 days.
Weather observation has a long tradition in what is now the Czech Republic. The first systematic temperature measurements began more than 250 years ago, in January 1775, at the observatory of the Clementium in Prague. The uninterrupted series of meteorological observations continues to this day at the former Jesuit college.
