Moscow stricken by historic heatwave

An ice-cream van stuck in melted asphalt on a Moscow street this week during the hottest five days in the city’s recorded history, freakish weather that triggered minor power failures, caused sunstrokes and led to a spate of drownings.

Russians, well prepared for winter, were caught by surprise by the unprecedented stretch of hot weather as the mercury climbed to high 80s and 90s Farenheit, forecasters said.

“A massive anti-cyclone over Central Asia is pumping hot air to the European part of Russia,” Tatyana Pozdnyakova, a Moscow weather forecasting service spokeswoman, told Russian news agencies.

Muscovites flocked to the city’s lakes, ponds and canals, not all of them considered safe for swimming. Fully-clothed people were seen jumping in fountains – a minor transgression by Russian law – but the police were told to ignore them until the weather cools down.

At least 28 people drowned in Moscow in May, including 17 in the last week alone, said city emergency department spokesman Yevgeny Bobylyov. Some of them were drunk, he said. Another 104 people were rescued.

Detentions for public drunkenness peaked as people consumed “copious” amounts of beer, said Moscow region police spokesman Kirill Sharov.

Heat strokes have sickened 16 people, four of them children, since Monday, the Moscow health department told Russian news agencies.

The Health Ministry warned people not to walk through forests because extreme heat makes ticks especially aggressive, Russia’s chief epidemiologist, Gennady Onishchenko, told the Interfax news agency. The ticks can carry disease.

“It feels like Arizona,” said tourist Jeffrey McLain, a construction engineer from Flagstaff, Arizona. “I never thought I would swelter in Moscow.”

The Russian Orthodox clergy – with their compulsory beards, heavy robes and hats – were suffering but seemed determined to withstand the heat.

“We have to get used to it,” said Father Artyomii, a bespectacled priest who sported a black woollen cassock and a high crowned hat. “The Church allows no exceptions even for this weather.”

Beverages and ice-cream manufacturers benefited from the heat with sales increasing two- and threefold.

“I just sold out the third refrigerator with ice-cream and cold drinks,” said street vendor Tatyana Prilepina, whose kiosk nestles near historic Red Square. “Got only ice tea left, and folks keep on coming and coming.”

Electricity consumption soared as people at home and in offices turned air conditioners on, and 14 transformer stations burned out in Moscow and its suburbs, according to the city’s electric company.

They said the ignitions were “insignificant” and would not lead to anything as devastating as the June 2005 outage in Moscow that crippled public transport, shut down industries and left millions without electricity.

Russian natural gas producers decided to cut production by 8% until September as demand fell due to the weather, Vagit Alekperov, CEO of Russia’s largest private oil company Lukoil, told Russian news agencies.

Forecasters said some cooling was expected tomorrow.