France Closes Schools as 49 Departments Hit the Red Heat Alert
A solstice-week heat dome pushed France toward a national record and shut hundreds of schools, with Britain's peak still days away.
France shut 845 schools and put 49 of its mainland departments on red alert on Monday, the highest warning Meteo-France issues, as a heatwave the forecaster says could deliver the hottest day ever recorded in the country settled over Western Europe.
The red zone covers more than two-thirds of the country, up from an orange alert that had stretched across 61 departments over the weekend. Meteo-France put the day's range at 38C to 40C around Paris, in western Brittany and the Rhone valley, and 40C to 42C from northern Aquitaine through Touraine and Anjou.
Daily life buckled with it. The education minister, Edouard Geffray, ordered 845 schools and colleges closed on Monday and another 1,800 to shorten their hours so pupils could leave before the afternoon peak. The national rail operator SNCF cancelled 71 Intercites services through the day, warning that the older trains' air-conditioning could fail in the heat. Several cities scaled back or scrapped Fete de la Musique events, and authorities banned alcohol sales tied to the festivities in places.
Across the Channel the numbers are smaller but the language is not. The Met Office extended its extreme heat warning with temperatures forecast to reach 38C, and Liz Bentley, chief executive of the Royal Meteorological Society, called the week an unprecedented heatwave with temperatures likely to reach 38-39C
, past the UK's June record of 35.6C. The British peak is expected Wednesday and Thursday.
What turns a hot week into a dangerous one is the combination, not the single reading. Humidity is running high alongside the heat, which slows the body's ability to cool itself and pushes heat stress onto people who would shrug off a dry 38C. Britain, France, Spain, Switzerland and Germany have all raised alerts, with parts of northern and central Italy following.
The date is the part worth sitting with. This is June, the solstice week, not the depth of August, and France is already weighing a national record while Britain eyes its hottest June day. Daybreak Wire watched the same heat dome build over the solstice weekend and push France's first red alerts. The mechanism behind the early timing is not mysterious: a dome of high pressure parked over the continent, riding a baseline that decades of warming have lifted, so the same weather pattern that once topped out in the low 30s now reaches into the 40s. The alerts will ease later in the week. The trend they sit on will not.
