EBN- It’s still spring in Brazil, but a heat wave is sweeping across large swathes of the country, packing Rio de Janeiro’s beach.
Most Brazilian states face “great danger” from the heat, according to the National Institute of Meteorology, Inmet.
The institution issued a red alert for the center-west, southeast and parts of the north Brazil warning of “a high probability of major damage and accidents, with risks to physical integrity or even human life.”
Rio de Janeiro recorded 42.5C on Sunday – a record for November – and high humidity on Tuesday meant that it felt like 58.5C, municipal authorities said.
More than a hundred million people have been affected by the heat. This is expected to last until at least Friday.
Officials have attributed it to the El Niño phenomenon and climate change.
The city of São Paulo saw average temperatures of 37.3C on Tuesday afternoon, the National Institute of Meteorology (Inmet) reported.
“I’m exhausted, it’s hard,” Riquelme da Silva, 22, told AFP news agency on the streets there.
“When I get home, it’s cold water, otherwise I can’t even get up because I’m so tired. It’s even hard to sleep.”
Dora, a 60-year-old street vendor, described the heat as “unbearable” for those who worked outside.
