The daily national and Budapest heat records were broken again on Sunday, and at dawn, a new record for the highest daily minimum temperature was set in the capital and nationwide, the weather service HungaroMet said on its website on Monday.
Heat record broken again
Peak temperatures rose above 40 degrees Celsius in several locations on Sunday, with 40.7 degrees Celsius recorded in Budakalász, near Budapest, which surpassed the previous daily record of 39.9 degrees Celsius set on the same day in Szarvas, in central Hungary, in 1935, the weather service said.
The 40.6 degrees Celsius recorded in Újpest, in northern Budapest, during the afternoon broke the capital’s previous record for the highest daily maximum temperature of 39.5 degrees Celsius set in 1935.
At the János-hegy station in Budapest, the air cooled to only 26.1 degrees Celsius at dawn, setting a new record for the highest daily minimum temperature in both the capital and the country. The previous record holder for the capital was Budapest’s Lágymányos station, which recorded a daily minimum of 22.2 degrees Celsius on the same day in 2017, while the previous national record was held by Szarvas, which recorded 23.6 degrees Celsius in 1935, the Hungarian news agency wrote.
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Hungary braces for record-breaking heat as ‘heat dome’ grips Europe
Hungary’s national meteorological service, HungaroMet, has warned that the start of the week will be dominated by intense heat, expected to peak on Tuesday, with the only question being whether the country’s all-time temperature record will be broken. That record currently stands at 41.9 °C, measured in Kiskunhalas in 2007.
Wherever the vast heat dome hanging over Europe has passed, historic records have already fallen. On Sunday alone, new highs were recorded in Poland, Germany and the Czech Republic, following similar extremes in Denmark and Switzerland on Saturday. Notably, temperatures in Doksany, in the Czech Republic, also reached 41.9 °C yesterday — an all-time national record.
According to HungaroMet, the heatwave is set to persist until Wednesday, when a cold front is expected to reach western Hungary, bringing a drop of around 10 degrees. By Thursday, cooler air will extend to the eastern regions, with highs settling at around 30C for the latter part of the week. While conditions will remain warm, they are likely to become more tolerable, with little significant rainfall expected.
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Elsewhere, the arrival of the cold front in the Netherlands has been accompanied by violent storms. According to the Hungarian news agency MTI, the Dutch meteorological institute (KNMI) recorded 301,137 lightning strikes during a storm that raged overnight from Saturday into Sunday — far exceeding the more than 188,000 strikes recorded during storms the previous weekend.
The institute added that, including the storm that broke out after 2am on Sunday, the total number of lightning strikes surpassed 500,000 — the highest figure since records began in 2004. The storms sparked several house fires, while strong winds tore the sails off a windmill. Hailstones measuring up to 5cm in diameter were reported near Hilversum.
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