Forecaster's verdict on if 38C European heatwave that killed two is coming to UK

A plume of warmth sparking a 38C heatwave across southern Europe could head towards the UK in a matter of days, forecasters say.

Schools have closed in Greece due to the extreme heat, caused by frequent southerly winds pulling hot air in from North Africa, also experiencing a heatwave currently. Such weather is only typically seen in both continents in July and August but, this year, there have been hotter air masses to tap into due to global warming.

Temperatures in the low 40Cs are forecast for Greece and Italy next week, as the hot air continues to move north. The pattern may continue to finally kickstart the UK's summer, forecasters say.

Ian Simpson, meteorologist with Netweather, wrote on its blog: "There is some chance of some of that North African and southern European heat making its way to the British Isles towards the end of June, depending on whether the ridges of high pressure from the Azores align in such a way that we pull in hot air masses from the south and south-east, but this is not a certainty.

The red hue denotes the warmest temperatures - of around 40C in Italy and Greece

"For the longer term, it looks likely that we will see a pattern shift which will promote warmer than average temperatures, with predominantly west to south-westerly winds and ridges of high pressure moving in from the Azores at times, interspersed with periods of more unsettled weather with low-pressure systems coming in off the North Atlantic. It is common for the weather patterns to shift in this way in late June, with a strengthening of the Azores High and stronger westerlies on its northern flank, though with the jet stream pushing northwards, for Britain, the westerlies will probably only be intermittent."

Weather maps for southern Europe show a blistering red hue as temperatures creep into the high 30Cs and low 40Cs. Two people have died of heatstroke in Cyprus, where temperatures have hit 40C - reportedly a record for the month of June. Other people remain in hospital due to illnesses caused by the heat, local media says.

Mr Simpson added: "Many schools have closed in Greece due to heat waves, defined as events where temperatures exceed 38C for at least three days in that part of the world."

Last year, the severest European heatwave happened in July. On this occasion, the mercury threatened to hit 50C in many countries, including Italy and Spain, and wildfires tore through the countryside.

Professor Hannah Cloke OBE, a top climate scientist, told the Mirror she expected to see similar scenes in the UK because climate change is continuing to ravage the world. Speaking to us last summer, she added: "It's in a society where we don't have the right housing, we don't have the right infrastructure, the right conditions to deal with some of these very, very high temperatures, and that's piggybacking on the risk from forest fire and floods.

"We've seen people dying around the world from intense rainfall flooding as well. That's obviously a risk from from extreme heat. As a climate scientist, I'm frightened by this. These temperatures are very high. We have seen them coming."

"They all were as we've been predicting, we know that this is gonna get worse and worse in the future as well. So this is just really the beginning of some of these extreme weather events."