Vavuniya recorded the highest temperature in Sri Lanka on Monday, with the mercury reaching 38.8°C at the Vavuniya Meteorological Station, the Department of Meteorology said.
Hours later the Natural Hazards Early Warning Centre issued an amber warm weather advisory for Tuesday, September 1, covering the Northern, North-Central and Eastern provinces and the Monaragala District.
What the advisory says
The advisory, issued at 4.00 p.m. on Monday, warns that the heat index — the temperature as felt by the human body — is expected to reach the “Caution” level in some areas during daylight hours.
The department noted that the heat index is calculated from relative humidity and maximum temperature and represents conditions experienced by the body. It stressed that the figure should not be read as a forecast of the actual maximum air temperature. Authorities advised the public to take precautions against the effects of increased heat.
The advisory area has widened
Tuesday’s advisory is broader than Monday’s, which covered the Eastern Province plus the Polonnaruwa, Jaffna, Kilinochchi, Mullaitivu, Vavuniya and Monaragala districts. Tuesday’s replaces that district list with three full provinces — Northern, North-Central and Eastern — while keeping Monaragala.
In practice the change draws in districts that had been outside the warning, including Anuradhapura, Mannar and Trincomalee, rather than shifting the affected zone somewhere new. The core of the warning area has been the same dry northern and eastern belt all month.
A month of continuous advisories
The same broad region has been under repeated heat advisories through August: the Eastern Province and six districts on August 28, Hambantota on August 29, and earlier bulletins covering seven districts on August 12 and August 15.
The persistence tracks the dry spell across the north and east, which has affected more than 80,000 people in seven districts and damaged some 8,000 acres of crops. The Met Office has called the current El Niño the strongest in living memory.
Vavuniya sits in the middle of that belt, and the district is already among those where reservoir levels have fallen sharply.
What was not reported
Ada Derana did not say whether 38.8°C is a record for Vavuniya, for August, or simply the highest reading in the country on the day — the report claims only the last. No comparison with previous years was given, and the department did not publish the second- and third-highest stations.
Neither report was carried by another verified newsroom at the time of writing.
