Widespread floods across Europe
Days of heavy rainfall across Europe have led to severe flooding in parts of Hungary, Serbia, Spain and Kosovo. Footage from these locations showed streets and fields totally submerged.

Days of heavy rainfall across Europe have led to severe flooding in parts of Hungary, Serbia, Spain and Kosovo. Footage from these locations showed streets and fields totally submerged.

Weather gods have been very kind to Europe so far this winter. Instead of normally very cold December and January, the weather turned to be unusually warm, breaking thousands of temperature records across much of the continent.

The second heatwave to hit Europe since mid-June 2022 has claimed more than 1 000 lives over the past 8 days, with most of them in Portugal. Numerous high temperature records have been broken and more are expected to fall over the next few days. This is the second heatwave to hit Europe since mid-June.

Record-breaking temperatures have engulfed parts of Europe for the second time since mid-June. Before the end of the week, temperatures are expected to reach the high 40s (°C). As a result, France, Britain, Portugal and Spain are on high alert over wildfires and public health.

Governments from Portugal to Italy are calling on citizens to limit water use to a bare minimum due to severe drought and scarce rainfall.

As the energy crisis in Europe continues deepening, the EU countries that depend on Russian gas have signaled a shift back to coal and started triggering emergency plans that could lead to natural gas rationing ahead of the 2022/23 winter season.

Large swaths of Europe experienced an early-season heatwave over the weekend, with temperatures more than 40 to 43 °C (104 – 110 °F) and numerous daily, monthly and all-time records broken. As those records were falling, a sharp temperature contrast first observed in the UK and NW Germany, fueled severe thunderstorms which are forecast to impact an area from France to Serbia on June 20 and 21.

Severe thunderstorms brought heavy rain and up to tennis ball-sized hail to France on June 3 and 4, 2022, wreaking havoc in vineyards across large parts of the country, leaving thousands of homes without power, one person dead and 15 injured – two of them seriously.

Eurozone inflation in April 2022 is expected to be 7.5%, hitting a record high for the sixth consecutive month.

Between soaring food prices and feed shortages, the war in Ukraine has rocked the EU’s agri-food sector and thrown an age-old issue back into the limelight: food security.