Britons told not to sit under trees during heatwave

Sitting under park trees during the incoming heatwave is hazardous and should be avoided, a local authority has warned.

Normanby Hall Country Park in Lincolnshire has five aging trees losing branches at an alarming rate thanks to a lack of rainwater.

Temperatures are expected to reach 33C on Wednesday in parts of southern England, but visitors at the Scunthorpe park should find cover elsewhere, experts say.

Liam Dent, a parks and garden officer at the site, told the BBC: “The trees are basically going into survival mode.

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“They’re trying to protect the main trunk and [their] system. Any branches that are untoward or have cracks in them, they’re just shredding them.”

Some park-goers admitted the warning hit home.

“If you got struck by a tree or a branch, it could be fatal”, Jayne Portas told the BBC.

The Normanby Hall trees are inspected daily, but those that appear dead, look cracked or are leaning should be avoided, officers say.

Visitors who spot any of these symptoms should report them, the authority said.

The weekend showed some respite temperature-wise as parts of the country cooled, but meteorologists are widely expecting a return to sizzling heat.

The Met Office has issued a yellow alert from 9am on Tuesday to 9am on Friday for the east and West Midlands, the south-east, south-west and east of England. Yorkshire and the Humber also received the warning.

The UK Health and Security Agency (UKHSA) issued a warning of potential “significant impacts” on health and social care services.

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Such impacts may include a rise in deaths among the elderly or people with health problems, and an increase in drowning.

This week’s hot spell is expected to be a “north-south split” with Northern Ireland, Scotland and northern England under clouds with some showers breaking out.

Provisional Met Office data has July at 3C above average across the UK.

Dan Stroud, a Met Office meteorologist, says if forecasts are accurate, it would go down as one of the hottest July months on record.

Parts of Britain are enduring low-water levels as a result of the scorching temperatures, with North Wales and the Upper Severn becoming the first part of the UK to declare drought status on Thursday.

Should wildfires erupt, they could become exceptionally severe on Wednesday in parts of the east, south and south-east England, according to the Met Office.

Wildfires are already ravaging parts of Europe, with British tourists urged to leave south-west France amid “apocalyptic” scenes in port city Bordeaux.

In Malta, extreme temperatures placed severe pressure on the country’s electricity distribution network, prompting outages across the tourist hotspot.

Many were forced to sleep in communal corridors to escape the heat as air condition units broke down.

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