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Download Residents in Shanghai and its nearby regions won't get a break from the extreme heat until next week, as power suppliers gear up for surges in electricity consumption for air conditioning. On Wednesday, the city's meteorological department recorded a temperature of 38.6 C at about 2 pm in the city's Xujiahui area, the highest this summer. The number of extremely hot days this month may even surpass July 1934, the hottest month in the city's history, when the mercury surged above 35 C for 23 days, said Wu Rui, chief meteorologist at Shanghai Meteorological Bureau. In Hangzhou, the temperature topped 40.4 C on Wednesday, the highest on record since 1951, according to the city's meteorological bureau. It is the second consecutive day that the city's temperature exceeded 39 C. The large number of extremely hot days this month is closely related to the subtropical anticyclone in the western Pacific, which is stronger and closer to eastern China this summer, meteorologists said. Due to its influence, a large area of eastern China was quickly shrouded in the extreme heat when the rainy season ended on June 30. The anticyclone continues to grip Shanghai and its nearby regions this summer, leading to the high number of extremely hot days. "The subtropical high pressure belt is very stable this year in the Yangtze River Delta. The rain belt in northern China remains strong, which results in the subtropical high pressure belt being unable to move north," said Yang Jun, deputy director of Hangzhou’s meteorological bureau. | 
