Vietnam reaches 44.2C, breaks heat record for second day

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, May 8 (EFE).- Vietnam broke its all-time record for the highest temperature for the second consecutive day, reaching 44.2C in the north of the country, ten percent more than the previous all-time high recorded a day earlier, the Vietnamese meteorological service reported Monday.

The new record of 44.2C was reached in the town of Tuong Duong in the province of Nghe An, near the province of Thanh Hoa where it reached 44.1C Saturday and surpassed the record of 43.4C listed as the highest temperature ever reached in the country since 2019.

These extreme temperatures are due to a heat wave that has shaken the center and north of the country since Friday and has exacerbated the effects of the El Nino phenomenon, which is causing higher than usual heat in the country and throughout the world.

In neighboring Laos, an all-time high temperature was also reached on Saturday: 43.5C in the tourist town of Luang Prabang, 1.5C more than the previous record of 42C reached in May 2019, according to climatologist and climate historian Maximiliano Herrera.

Herrera said on his Twitter account, Extreme Temperatures Around the World, that in the last seven weeks “records have been broken almost daily at dozens of weather stations in an area of millions of square kilometers in Asia.”

For the expert, this extreme and persistent heat is “the most extreme heat record” that the world has experienced in a tropical area.

Thailand is also experiencing unusual heat that has shattered several temperature records, the last of them Sunday, with 41C degrees in Bangkok, the maximum reached in the capital since records were taken.

The highest in the country was exceeded on Apr. 15, with 45.4C in the province of Tak.

Also in Myanmar, thermometers exceeded 45C in April, the highest temperature in a decade, but without exceeding the 47.2C marked in 2010. EFE

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