In North Africa and the Middle East, 50 C is a common limit to be broken during the summer. However, this year the city of Al Jahra in Kuwait experienced this temperature limit that was broken on June 4 – early compared to a normal year. The heat that remained in North Africa throughout the week continued to bring temperatures as low as 50 degrees Celsius and then pushed north into Spain in the second half of this week. This is largely due to a mass of very hot subtropical air, along with the high pressure concentrated over the overlapping Atlantic to allow the hot gas mass across Africa to rise in the southerly stream. The remnants of the first Pacific hurricane of the season, Hurricane Agatha, which struck off the southern coast of Mexico in late May, have traveled more than 5,000 miles (8,000 kilometers) in two weeks. After the Agatha brought catastrophic floods to Mexico, the wreckage passed into the Gulf of Mexico last week, where it was reinforced in the first Atlantic storm of the season, Hurricane Alex. It in turn brought heavy rainfall all over Florida with sudden flooding before coming out into the open Atlantic Ocean. The low-pressure system associated with Alex’s wreckage crossed the Atlantic this week and affected the weather in the UK, bringing strong winds and showers across the UK on Friday.
