China has faced its hottest summer in over half a century, causing the government to declare a level two weather emergency.
No room to cool off Image: Xinhuanet |
In the month of July, the average temperature in Shanghai was 32.1 degrees Celcius – a scorching 4.2 degrees above usual levels and the hottest summer the city has seen since weather records began over 140 years ago.
August showed no signs of the hot weather abating, as temperatures rose to more than 40 degrees, prompting the government to declare a level two weather emergency, usually reserved for typhoons and hurricanes, which advises all citizens to stay indoors (or possibly in the freezer section of their local Lotus Store!)
The extreme weather has brought on strange phenomena across the country: in the eastern province of Zhejiang a billboard spontaneously combusted by the side of the road. Stranger still, the southern city of Wuhan has had reports of trees randomly catching fire in a spectacle that local forestry experts claimed “rarely happened under normal circumstances.”
Resilient residents have found novel ways of dealing with the heat. One blogger set down a frying pan and cooked himself a slice of bacon on the People’s Square in Shanghai, while a picture of a young boy cooking an egg on a manhole cover has become a viral Internet sensation.