China’s Shanghai recorded its hottest May day in 100 years on Monday, with temperatures reaching 36.1 degrees Celsius, continuing a brutal trend of unusually hot weather in the country since March.
Several provinces in southern China are expected to swelter under extreme heat in the coming days, and weather experts have already predicted another scorching summer, a repeat of last year’s record that lasted more than two months.
The hottest May day in the last century was recorded in Shanghai
The peak recorded by the Shanghai Meteorological Bureau on Monday surpassed the previous May record of 35.7 degrees Celsius, set in 1876, 1903, 1915 and 2018, according to bureau statistics. Temperatures in the region usually climb even higher in June, July and August.
Earlier, several localities in Sichuan province, home to more than 80 million people, issued high temperature warnings, with some areas reaching a maximum of 42 degrees Celsius, according to local media, cited by Reuters.
In the next three to five days, the maximum temperature in some cities in southwest China’s Sichuan will reach 38 degrees Celsius and reach 42 degrees Celsius in some areas, according to state media.
The China Meteorological Administration stated that in the period until Wednesday, in most of southern China, including Guizhou, Yunnan and Sichuan provinces, temperatures will exceed 35 degrees Celsius, and in some areas will reach 37-39 degrees. Celsius degrees.
China, known for its extreme weather conditions, has also been experiencing weeks of torrential rain in some regions.
Thousands of people have been evacuated since Monday in the country’s northeastern Sichuan province as a precaution due to heavy rainfall in the area, local emergency response authorities said.
At the same time, the neighboring municipality of Chongqing warned of the risk of flooding on Monday, expecting the water level of the Jialing River, a tributary of the Yangtze River, to rise by about 6 meters on Tuesday due to torrential rains.