From Thursday 20 August to the end of the week, Macedonia comes under the influence of a new pronounced heatwave from the south, from Africa. The weather will be mostly stable, dry and sunny - with one exception, Saturday 22 August, when conditions for local instability develop in the afternoon, bringing heavy rain, thunderstorms, strong wind and brief hailstorms, especially in mountain areas.

This was forecast by meteorologist Slavčo Poposki.

How hot

Temperatures will be considerably above average - from high to extremely high, above 33 degrees everywhere. In Pelagonia, the Skopje basin and the south-eastern parts they will exceed 40.

But the figure that gets commented on least and matters most is the night-time one. Tropical nights are expected - the mercury not dropping below 20 degrees in the Skopje basin, Pelagonia and the south-east. That is the point at which a heatwave stops being an inconvenience and becomes a health risk, because the body never gets a break to cool down.

Where this lands on an already open wound

Look at the geography of the forecast, then at the geography of yesterday's news. Pelagonia - above 40 degrees. In that same region, in the Prilep part of Mariovo, the fire line runs for twenty kilometres and the largest active fire in the country is being held back at night by volunteers. Tall dry grass and shifting wind are already the main obstacle to putting it out.

Now add four days of extreme heat on top of that.

In the Skopje basin, meanwhile, the tropical nights arrive in the same week that patients with West Nile fever are being treated at the Clinic for Infectious Diseases - a disease carried by a mosquito that is at its most active precisely on warm nights.

What is being recommended

The advice is standard and correct: avoid going out during the hottest part of the day, between 11am and 5pm, and drink more fluids.

That works for someone who can stay indoors. It does not work for a construction worker, for a picker in the fields in season, for a driver, for a man working in a yard. They have neither of those two things - no shade, and no say over their working hours.

For them the advice is addressed to the wrong place. It is the employer who sets the schedule, and the inspectorate that checks whether he changed it.