The eastern half of the US is facing a significant heatwave, with more than 185 million people under warnings due to intense and widespread heat conditions on Monday.
The south-east is likely to endure the most dangerous temperatures as the extreme heat spread across the region on Monday, spanning from the Carolinas through Florida. In these areas, heat index values (how hot it feels once humidity is accounted for) are forecast to range between 105 and 113F (40.5 to 45C).
Some locations in Mississippi and Louisiana face an even greater threat, with the heat index possibly soaring as high as 120F (49C).
Meanwhile, the midwest isn’t escaping the heat. Conditions there remain hazardous into Monday and Tuesday, after a weekend in which temperatures felt as if they were between 97 and 111F (36 to 44C) in areas from Lincoln, Nebraska, north to Minneapolis.
The authorities were also battling flare-ups on the islands of Evia and Crete. In all of the stricken areas residents received messages to evacuate.
Several regions were placed under a red category 5 alert, the highest on the national scale, because of conditions exacerbated by the extreme weather that had turned terrain to tinder.
The National Observatory in Athens recorded a temperature of 45.8C (114.5F) in Messinia on Friday. On Saturday, the temperature reached 45.2C (113.4F) in Amfilochia, western Greece.
By late Sunday, as Czech firefighters and Italian water-bombers joined emergency teams in Greece, the focus turned to Kythera.
Describing the destruction as “incalculable”, the public broadcaster ERT reported: “The first images are resonant of a biblical disaster as huge areas have been reduced to cinders and ash.”
The island’s deputy mayor, Giorgos Komninos, was cited as saying: “Everything, from houses, beehives [to] olive trees has been burnt.”
Two teams of forest commandos, 67 firefighters and scores of volunteers backed by 22 fire brigade trucks, three helicopters and two planes were struggling to douse flames that had ripped through prime agricultural and forest land on the island fuelled by gale-force winds.
As flames approached, villagers were ordered to evacuate to safer areas, with 139 people, including tourists who were trapped on a beach, being rescued by the coast guard.
The meteorologist Panagiotis Yiannopoulos told ERT: “We are expecting the winds to get stronger right over Kythera and Crete, winds of six-beaufort strength from this evening until Tuesday evening, so a lot of very strong wind over many hours.”
