National weather service, Méteo France, has warned that most of France is entering what is described as a “plateau” of unrelenting heatwave conditions that isn’t forecast to start easing before Friday at the earliest.

Méteo France said that multiple towns in western and central France, including the major port of Saint-Nazaire on the Atlantic seaboard, with an overnight low of 23.2 C (73.8 F), experienced their hottest night ever Sunday to today, Monday.

Paris endured its hottest night for a month of June, not getting below 24.2 C (75.5 F) — a half-degree hotter than the previous record from 2017. The weather service warned of even hotter nights.

France, the largest country in the European Union and second most populated, braced for a week of record-busting temperatures, sweltering under a grueling heat wave that combines daytime highs above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) and sweaty nights.

“This will continue through the end of the week, with heat levels never before recorded across more than three-quarters of the country on Wednesday and Thursday.”
Méteo France

A growing swath of France, spreading on Monday to more than half of its regions, was under a “red alert” for heat, with larger areas forecast to suffer highs busting past 40 C and nights not dropping below 20 C.

A red alert for extreme heat affects 49 departments, stretching from Île-de-France, Burgundy, and northern Auvergne to the west of the country. An additional 40 departments are under an orange alert for extreme heat.

The weather service noted that the persistence of very hot and dry weather, along with the lack of rain, is significantly accelerating the drying out of vegetation. An increase in the number of crop and brush fires is being observed. Due to the expected very high temperatures, low humidity, and increased winds next week, the risk of forest fires is expected to spread to new areas and reach a higher level.

In a country without widespread air-conditioning, people, businesses and services tried to adapt as best they could. Hundreds of schools were closed today and many hundreds more were canceling some classes.

Broadcasts on the Paris transport network urged commuters to hydrate. Medical specialists took to the airwaves to warn of the potentially deadly cocktail of drinking alcohol in extreme heat. Authorities cracked down on alcohol consumption in public. Multiple drownings were reported as people sought relief in rivers, despite warnings about currents and other dangers.

Authorities are notably worried about people living in the baking streets, and elderly people in nursing homes or isolated in their homes. About 15,000 older people died in France in a 2003 heat wave that became a national reckoning. The government mobilized emergency services and military forces for reinforced wildfire readiness, imposed tightened surveillance of water supplies to France’s many nuclear reactors, and ordered 845 schools to close today.

Heatwave Spread Across Europe

In the United Kingdom, the weather office also issued an “extreme heat” warning for much of southern England and parts of Wales from Monday until Thursday. It said that temperatures could reach 38 C (100 F). The current record for a June day is 35.6 C (96 F), reached in 1976.

Spain kicked off the summer with large parts of the country on alert because of temperatures expected to hover around 40 C (104 F) — even in the interior of the Basque region, an area in the north of the country, which typically experiences cooler temperatures. Authorities have suspended outdoor sports and cultural activities in the region. The heat wave is expected to scorch Spain at least through Wednesday.

In Italy, authorities expanded heat warnings, referred to locally as “red flags,” to eight cities Sunday in northern and central parts of the country. Temperatures there are mostly in the upper 30s C (high 90s to low 100s F).

German meteorologists are also forecasting temperatures of up to 37 C (98 F) for Monday and Tuesday, and up to 39 C (102 F) on Wednesday.

The World Health Organization’s Europe office said this month that over the last four years, more than 200,000 people across Europe died from heat-related causes, and most of the fatalities were preventable. More above-average temperatures are expected this summer, which can cause heat exhaustion and life-threatening heat stroke.

Human-caused climate change is tied to increasing extreme weather, and U.N. climate agency projections say the next five years should shatter more heat records. A rapid study also found that human-caused climate change was responsible for killing about 1,500 people in an unusually early European heat wave in May.