LONDON (AFP) - Extreme weather hit Europe Saturday as the death toll from a heat wave in Romania, Austria and Bulgaria rose to 18 and hundreds faced another night of misery in flood-drenched England.
A total of 11 people have now died in Romania amid a heat wave which led to five deaths in Austria and two in Bulgaria.
In England, meanwhile, the problem was not heat but rain, causing the second serious outbreak of flooding within a month.
People in many parts of the country were being advised not to travel, while Prime Minister Gordon Brown stepped in to praise the “superb” work of the armed forces and emergency services tasked with handling the response.
Rail company First Great Western told would-be passengers to stay at home, while thousands of motorists were stranded for hours as motorways in some parts of the country came to a standstill.
Weather forecasters the Met Office had severe weather warnings in place across a thick band of south-eastern and eastern England.
And in Worcestershire, in the badly hit west central of the country, more than 1,000 people were spending Saturday night in temporary accomodation. Some 2,000 in the region slept away from home Friday night.
Military helicopters have rescued more than 100 people from house rooftops, caravan parks and a bridge as well as strips of land cut off by water since rains hit on Friday, rescue officials said.
At Stratford-upon-Avon in central England, the Royal Shakespeare Company was forced to cancel two performances after its riverside theatre was flooded.
A spokesman for forecaster MeteoGroup said that more storms were looming later Saturday and Sunday, although on a less severe scale.
Some 141 domestic and international flights leaving from and arriving to London’s Heathrow Airport were cancelled because of the rains on Friday, and passengers were being re-issued tickets on Saturday, an airport spokesman said.
The spokesman said flights were running normally on Saturday.
Stewart Wortley, a meteorologist at the Met Office, refuted suggestions in front-page newspaper headlines that the storms hitting Britain resembled monsoons in India.
“Whilst they are unusual to be widespread like this, they’re not totally unusual. They have happened before,” Wortley told AFP.
He said 142.6 millimetres (5.6 inches) of rain fell in Pershore, Worcestershire on Friday, far short of the 279 milimetres (10.9 inches) that fell in Martinstown, Dorset on July 18, 1955 — the daily record in England.
In another comparison, he said, some 43 milimetres (1.6 inches) of rain fell in one hour in south London on Friday, but the record for one hour was 92 milimetres (3.6 inches) in July 1901 in Maidenhead, in Berskshire.
The latest bad weather came after four people died in floods in June, and thousands of people are still homeless after flood damage in central and northern England.
In southeast Europe, several countries were wilting under baking temperatures.
In Romania, the number of people who died as a result of a week-long heat wave rose to 11, while in Austria, five deaths have been blamed on heat.
In Hungary, the temperature hit an all-time record of 41.9 degrees Celsius (107 Fahrenheit) at Kiskunhalas, 130 kilometres (81 miles) south of the capital Budapest, the national weather service (OMSZ) said.
Bulglaria has endured a five-day heat wave that has sparked forest fires and left two people dead.