A Neath-based bus company has tickled social media with a cheerfully honest warning to passengers ahead of this week’s extreme heat: yes, it’s going to be hot on board, and no, the air con isn’t broken.
With a rare red heat warning in force across South Wales, South Wales Transport got its excuses in early with a Facebook post that has had passengers chuckling.
The operator said it knew exactly what was coming once the mercury climbed.
“Why isn’t the air con working?” and “It’s hotter than the gates of hell on here!” were the messages it predicted would soon be rolling in.
So the firm offered a pre-emptive explanation — part science lesson, part comedy.
All its coaches have air conditioning, it said, apart from the ones “old enough to remember decimalisation,” and every unit was serviced within the past year, the most recent just a fortnight ago.
The problem, it explained, is physics. A 12-metre coach holds around 120 cubic metres of air that needs cooling, and on a full run it carries about 50 passengers — “roughly 20 times more people than your car, all generating heat, breathing, chatting, and generally existing at 37°C.”
Add what the company called the “giant windows acting like a mobile greenhouse,” and the air con units are, in its words, “basically fighting for their lives this week.”
The post saved its warmest sympathy for the drivers.
The company asked passengers to spare a thought for staff who spend all day behind “a windscreen the size of a conservatory, slowly roasting like a Sunday pork belly while smiling politely and pretending everything is fine.”
It signed off asking riders to stay hydrated and patient — and to offer a driver a cold drink if they saw one, “I can guarantee they are hotter than you.”
Behind the jokes, the heat this week is no laughing matter.
The Met Office has issued a rare red extreme heat warning for Wednesday and Thursday covering Swansea, Neath Port Talbot, Carmarthenshire and much of southern Wales, with temperatures possibly reaching 38C to 40C in places.
Forecasters warn the heat brings a risk to health even for healthy people, and have urged everyone to stay out of the sun during the hottest part of the day, keep hydrated and look out for vulnerable neighbours.
An amber warning runs across much of Wales from earlier in the week, with very warm, humid nights making it harder to cool down.
It is shaping up to be a sweltering few days across the region — on the buses and off them, with Blackpill Lido still shut just as the region could have done with a dip.
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The BBC have stated that Wales will experience a ‘Greta Thunburg Emergency Climate Crisis’ between Wednesday and Thursday morning.
For all of us who are old enough to remember watching Bagpuss…it’s called Summer….