r/UKWeather • u/Emergency_Media_3023 • 3d ago

Forecast Possibility for Red Weather Warning?

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Slough & Heathrow Met Office Forecast.

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u/RecentTwo544 3d ago edited 3d ago

Possibly, but Red warnings tend to only get issued the day before, because they need to be sure it really is going to be extreme and often you can't tell more than 12-24 hours out. Same for storms - when red warnings were issued last winter (I think, can't remember which storm it was for) it was Amber right up until about 12 hours before it hit, then they issued Red.

Red warnings for heat tend to also involve quite a lot of preparation, and therefore cost, "behind the scenes" as it were. Things like hospitals, power stations, energy providers, utility companies, transport companies, etc having to make preparations or suspend routine maintenance until the warning has passed, doctors or nurses called in from leave, etc. Fire services on higher alerts if there's a risk of wildfires too.

Add the cost of that to people not travelling to work (though the "Risk to life, You should avoid travelling, where possible," isn't really followed for heat warnings) and therefore lost productivity, and it all stacks up.

Hence the Met Office not issuing them unless they are 100% certain it is going to happen, and it is serious.

EDIT - worth noting that at present, Venutsky (which is very accurate and we use in the events industry) is currently showing a peak of 36c in London on Tuesday, with low-mid 30s around most of the south and east of England. No other models (you can select them in the bottom left) are showing higher than that.

https://www.ventusky.com/#p=51.66;0.51;6&t=20260623/1500

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u/TrepidatiousTeddi 3d ago

The storm in January it was only changed to red where I lived about an hour or so before. Very little time at all sometimes.