Heatwave: stop bathing children to conserve water, suppliers urge

Parents are being urged to stop bathing their children while gardeners have been asked to let their lawns go brown and only water plants at night, over fears that the heatwave may spark a drought.

Thames Water warned that dry spells between February and June had led to river and groundwater levels dropping and said it could not be certain they reservoirs would refill before the winter.

The company said that while a hosepipe ban was unlikely, customers should do all they can to conserve water over the coming weeks, adding that they were ‘carefully monitoring the situation.’

They urged gardeners to stop hosing their lawns and only water flower beds and pots at night to avoid evaporation.

Anglian Water which services the East of England said they were expecting demand to surge this weekend advised customers to skip bathing their children at night if they had been in the paddling pool.

“We always want people to think about using water wisely,” said a spokesman.

“If the children have been in the paddling pool all afternoon do they need a bath? Be brave. Skip bath time.”

^{Sunbathers on a sunny Southsea beach in Hampshire}

Thames Water said gardeners should remove all weeds from flowerbeds to stop them using up precious water and consider planting less thirsty plants like lavender and begonia. They are also offering cut price water butts.

“It has been pretty dry for the last few months (between February and June we have only had two thirds of the rainfall we would expect) so of course groundwater and river levels are dropping,” said a spokesman.

“Reservoir stocks are currently around 85 per cent, but we never know what the weather will bring more than a couple of weeks ahead and we cannot rely on being able to refill them before the winter.

“It is unlikely that we will need to impose any widespread restrictions on water use this year but we will be monitoring the situation carefully.”

Forecasters say the temperatures are unlikely to quite reach the levels of Wednesday when Heathrow recorded 98.1F (36.7C) breaking the record for a July day. But the weather will still feel very hot for the time of year, and could give way to thunderstorms and flash floods.

The Met Office has issued a yellow "be aware" severe weather warning, which runs from 7pm on Friday night to noon on Saturday.

^{Thunderstorms have been breaking up the hot spell}

"Isolated heavy, and possibly severe, thunderstorms are expected to develop on Friday evening across parts of England and Wales,” said a spokesman for The Met Office.

"These are likely to become more frequent later and spread northwards towards southern Scotland. Some torrential downpours are possible leading to localised surface water flooding, with large hail and frequent lightning also possible hazards."

The prospect of fresh storms comes as some householders and businesses in the north of England and Scotland are counting the cost of the wave of freak weather that followed Wednesday's record-breaking temperatures.

More than 50,000 people in the north-east of England had their power cut, a nursery owner in North Yorkshire watched as up to 5,000 greenhouse panes were smashed by giant hailstones, dozens of cars were damaged by the hail and a house in County Durham lost its roof to a blaze, apparently following a lightning strike.

The Met Office said the 34-hour period to 10am yesterday saw 19,525 lightning strikes, 15,273 of which were in Scotland.

Northern Powergrid, the company responsible for running the power network across the North East, Yorkshire and northern Lincolnshire, said it has restored power to all remaining customers affected by the lightning storms.

A spokeswoman said: "We've had more than 500 of our engineers working to carry out repairs to our network to restore electricity supplies for all of the 57,500 customers across North Yorkshire, County Durham, Tyne and Wear and Northumberland who had a power cut as a result of the storms."

AA Insurance said it had received a spate of claims for cars damaged by hail, particularly in north-east England.