With temperatures expected to reach a stifling 39 degrees in parts of the Netherlands on Friday, the KNMI weather service issued a code red warning for excessive heat.
The alert came into force at midnight on Thursday and covers eight of the country’s 12 provinces: Noord-Brabant, Gelderland, Utrecht, Limburg, Noord-Holland, Zuid-Holland, Flevoland and Overijssel.
Zeeland, Friesland, Groningen and Drenthe remain on code orange, while the Wadden Islands stay on the lower code yellow.
The code red announcement put paid to the Defqon.1 hardstyle festival in Biddinhuizen, in Flevoland, where thousands of fans had gathered at a campsite. “There comes a point where the safety of the visitors and staff becomes an issue and that point was the code red warning,” Q-dance director Sander Bijlstra told news agency ANP.
Local authorities are continuing to issue warnings about unsafe swimming sites. Rivers, in particular, are deemed dangerous because of strong currents. On Thursday, three people died while swimming.
The body of a 19-year-old man was recovered an hour after he jumped off a bridge head into the Spiegelwaal near Nijmegen and in Utrecht, a 13-year-old boy, who had gone missing, was found to have drowned in the Strijkviertelplas. In Middelaar, in Limburg, police are investigating an accident in which a person was killed in a collision with a boat. The driver of the boat has been arrested.
According to an analysis by scientists from the World Weather Attribution (WWA), the severity of the heatwave in Europe is caused by climate change linked to burning fossil fuels, with data showing that extreme temperatures in June were rare just 50 years ago.
The result of the analysis “came as no surprise”, KNMI researcher Sjoukje Philips, who contributed to the data, told broadcaster NOS. However, the spread of the heatwave and the speed with which temperatures have gone up over the last few years is astounding, she said.
