Source: The Age
URL: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/206031558
Date: 04/06/1947
Event: "Western Europe is suffering its most severe heat wave for many years"
Credit: The Age, Trove (National Library of Australia)
THE AGE - JUN 4, 1947
LONDON IN GRIP OF INTENSE HEAT
"The Age"' Special "Correspondent
LONDON, June 3
Western Europe is suffering its most severe heat wave for many years. In London, tar on the streets is melting where only three months ago were piles of ice and frozen snow, an accumulation of weeks of blizzards in the worst winter the country had for 80 years.
A tram stuck fast in tar which had run on to the tracks in South London and caused a half hour hold up.
Heat caused the two halves of Tower Bridge, which are raised and lowered, to expand so much they would not meet properly. The bridge was closed while engineers got to work.
Early in the evening a gas main at one end of the bridge exploded, hurling paving stones over the bridge and lifting a stationary lorry two feet off the ground.
The bridge being practically empty, nobody was hurt.
London had another stifling night, the midnight temperature being 80 deg., one deg. higher than the temperature at midnight the previous night.
In the afternoon, London's temperature stayed at 90 deg. for an hour and a half. This is four deg. off the record set up in August, 1911, and is phenomenal for this time of the year.
Housewives had a trying day. Milk curdled in many homes and salad materials - the only food most people felt like eating - were in short supply.
Temperatures on the Continent were about the same as in London, but the contrast in many places there between the usual June weather and present conditions was even sharper.
Copenhagen had its hottest day for 50 years and 20 people collapsed.
In Vienna, 40 persons were taken to hospital. In Berlin the temperature was 100 deg.
London's temperature at noon (G.M.T.) was 91 deg., four degrees higher than the same time yesterday.