Four consecutive very hot days mean that homes gradually get hotter. Around 75% of our homes doesn't have a cooling system, despite the rapid growth of air conditioning since 2019. We never needed one before climate change hit hard.
2/8

Meteorological institute @knmi now predicts that the nights will get very hot too. For the night from Thursday to Friday, they expect a low temperature of 24°C. That'd beat the previous record from July 2018 by 1.5°C!
Night ventilation won't cool our homes to a comfortable level in such a night.
3/8

This coming Friday will be the 9th day of our national heatwave (consecutive days above 25°C with at least three above 30°C). We've never seen such a long heatwave before July (8 days in 1936 and 1976), and it won't be over yet on Friday.
4/8

Five or six 'tropical days' (above 30°C) in June is very rare for the center of the country (De Bilt). I don't have the stats at hand (I bet @Datagraver does), but it's more typical for the summer as a whole, with most occurring in July and August.
5/8

The absolute high temperatures that we'll experience in the coming days are extreme, too. For 75 years, we knew that the highest temperature ever recorded was 38.6°C in Warnsveld (1944). Then came July 2019, and we crashed forward to 40.7°C (Gilze Rijen, 25 July).
Now, 39-40°C is already possible again.
6/8

In short, this is a weirdly extreme event, only possible due to climate change. As @tinuspulles.bsky.social pointed out, explanations like 'heat dome' and 'jet stream' are about mechanisms. The driving force behind all of this is global warming, largely due to burning fossil fuels.
7/8

There we go. Sweaty morning commute on the bicycle. Temperature already 7°C up from its early morning low by 08:30.
Found the office at 27.5°C; keeping the shading down at night is not allowed here, so the evening sun heated it up nicely. Cooling it down a bit for the colleagues now :)
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