Britain awoke on Tuesday after experiencing its warmest night on record, with temperatures remaining in the mid-20s, and with more potentially record-breaking temperatures in the forecast.
A high of 40 degrees was predicted for Tuesday, a trend that was not only causing Britons to sweat but resulting in growing travel chaos.
The Met Office tweeted: “It has provisionally been the warmest night on record in the UK.
The temperatures didn’t fall below 25C in places, exceeding the previous highest daily minimum record of 23.9C, recorded in Brighton on 3rd August 1990.
Transport Secretary Grant Shapps had conceded Britain’s transport network could not cope with the extreme heat.
As the heatwave continued, Shapps told people to apply common sense and depending on the nature of your journey and the reason for it, you might want to consider rearranging your day around it.
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He told BBC Breakfast: “We’ve seen a considerable amount of travel disruption.
“We’re probably going to see the hottest day ever in the UK recorded today, and infrastructure, much of it built in Victorian times, wasn’t built to withstand this type of temperature.
“It will be many years before we can replace infrastructure with the kind of infrastructure that can because the temperatures are so extreme.’’
Asked if the transport system could cope with the weather, he said: “The simple answer at the moment is no.
“Where those tracks are 40 degrees in the air, on the ground that could be 50, 60, 70 and more, so you get a severe danger of tracks buckling.
What we can’t have are trains running over those and a terrible derailing.
“We’ve got to be very cautious and conscious of that, which is why there are reduced speeds on large parts of the network.’’
