Read back: Tropical day in Limburg

In this live blog you can follow everything about the heat in the province and the most important developments in the country.

The municipality of Horst aan de Maas started on Tuesday with the spreading of some roads. This is to protect the roads from the heat. Spreading mainly takes place in places where there is a lot of freight traffic and there is already wear and tear.

Municipal employees fill the gritters on the Americaneweg in Horst. The trucks will remain on standby for the foreseeable future in case the next spreading job presents itself due to the warm weather.

It has never been as warm on July 19 as it is currently, Weeronline reports. The old record of 37.1 degrees – measured in 2006 in Westdorpe – was broken around 1.50 pm. Then it was 37.3 degrees in Maastricht.

According to the weather bureau, it is tropical throughout the country with temperatures above 30 degrees. On Terschelling the mercury has reached 30.1 degrees and in Den Helder the thermometer shows 34.0 degrees. In De Bilt, the temperature has so far risen to 34.0 degrees.

Travelers departing from the airport in Beek are warned not to arrive too early. The airport also tweeted that there are no buses between the terminal and parking lot P5, making it a perilous undertaking to lug heavy suitcases to the departure hall.

Meteo Limburg compared again with record day 25 July 2019. In Arcen, the warmest temperature ever was measured in Limburg. The question is whether that record will be broken. It is currently slightly less warm than it was then. On July 25, 2019 at 13:00 it was 35.1 degrees in Arcen, today it is 34.1 degrees. The figures in South Limburg are also slightly behind the record day. In 2019 it was 37.5 degrees at the Beek weather station at 13:00, now it is 36.1 degrees.

Because of the heat, Fairytale Forest Valkenburg is closed on Tuesdays. “Our fairytale characters prefer to seek the shade, just like you! That’s why we close the park for a day,” the park writes on Facebook.

The weather station in Beek is the first official measuring point in the Netherlands to break the 35-degree limit. The temperature was measured just before noon. They are also close to that temperature in parts of Gelderland and Zeeland. With the exception of the Wadden Islands, it is now above 30 degrees everywhere in the Netherlands, so also in De Bilt. If the limit of 30 degrees is reached there, one can officially speak of a tropical day. On Monday, the temperature in De Bilt also shot above 30 degrees. It was the first tropical day of the year.

At 11:00, the weather station between Ell and Haler just barely touched 30 degrees, but all three weather stations in Limburg now indicate temperatures above 30 degrees. At 11:20 am it was 33.5 degrees in Beek, 31.7 degrees was measured in Arcen and at Ell the thermometer came out at 30.7 degrees.

Meteo Limburg compared the temperatures measured at 11:00 a.m. at the weather stations in Limburg with those of 25 July 2019. At 40.2 degrees, the warmest temperature so far was measured in Limburg on that day. Compared to that year, it was half a degree less warm at 11:00. In Arcen the thermometer was at 30.1 degrees. In 2019 it was 30.7 degrees around that time. It is also slightly less warm in South Limburg.

On the Dutch highways, it was less busy than usual in the morning rush hour on Tuesday. There were hardly any traffic jams and the employees of the Wegenwacht also had it quiet, the ANWB reports. It is impossible to say whether people will stay at home because of the heat, according to the traffic information service, because it is already quieter on the road than normal in the North and Central regions due to the holiday.

The Limburg football clubs also take the heat into account. MVV Maastricht was supposed to play an exhibition game against Patro Eisden on Tuesday morning, but that game has been canceled due to the heat. Instead, MVV trained at 9:00 AM on Tuesday morning. Roda JC also trained an hour earlier than usual.

VVV-Venlo is at a training camp and will play a practice match against Jong AZ in Horst on Tuesday evening. Due to the heat, that game has been moved from 6:00 PM to 7:45 PM. Fortuna Sittard is also at training camp. The Eredivisionist is preparing for the new season in Zeeland in the coming days. The players could already be found on the beach on Monday evening.

In Limburg, code orange will be in effect on Tuesday between 11:00 a.m. and 9:00 p.m. The KNMI has announced this warning code because of the very high temperatures. Code orange also applies in North Brabant, Gelderland, Overijssel, Utrecht, Zeeland and South Holland. The KNMI has issued a code yellow for the other provinces.

On Monday and the beginning of Tuesday, code yellow was already in effect in Limburg because of the heat. If code orange is withdrawn on Tuesday evening at 9 p.m., code yellow will apply again in our province. That warning code is in effect until 10:00 a.m. Wednesday morning.

As expected, the thermometer doesn’t take long to hit 30 degrees today. It is already more than 30 degrees in Maastricht, Beek and Sittard. At the weather station in Beek, 31.4 degrees have already been measured. It probably won’t be long before the other places will follow.

After the first official tropical day, the first tropical night is also over. For that, it must have been more than 20 degrees for 24 hours and that happened in Vlissingen, Weeronline reports. That temperature was already reached in the night from Sunday to Monday and since then the temperature has not been below 20 degrees.

In the Netherlands, the National Heat Plan came into effect on Tuesday for the second day in a row. Everyone is advised to drink well, not exert themselves too much, seek the shade and look after others. The National Heat Plan is announced by the RIVM in consultation with the KNMI.