France recorded its hottest day on a national scale Tuesday as an early-summer heat dome settled over western Europe, the weather service Meteo France said, with the town of Pissos in the Landes region reaching 44.3 C (111.7 F) and the country's 30-station thermal indicator averaging 29.8 C (85.6 F). A heat-related transformer failure in Ergue-Gaberic knocked out power to about 68,000 homes in Brittany on Tuesday evening, and Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu said 40 people had drowned since June 18 while seeking relief in rivers, canals and unsupervised beaches.
The wave is the second heat dome to park over the continent in two months and has triggered red alerts in France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Meteo France placed 54 French departments under red warnings Tuesday, about half the country, and said more regions would tip into the red Wednesday. Europe is warming at twice the global average rate since the 1980s, the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service said, and the World Health Organization's Europe office said this month that more than 200,000 people on the continent have died from heat-related causes over the past four years.
The Omega block
Meteorologists attribute the heat to an Omega block, a pattern shaped like the Greek letter that wedges a dome of high pressure between two cooler systems and allows heat to build for days. Meteo France described the wave as a "plateau of severity," with unrelenting heat day and night; France logged its hottest night on record from Monday into Tuesday, averaging 29.9 C. Bordeaux's all-time high was broken on three consecutive days, topping out at 42.1 C on Tuesday.
Power and grids
The Brittany outage spread from a single transformer, and the regional operator said priority for restoration would go to hospitals and nursing homes, with generators dispatched to retirement facilities still off the grid. Utility EDF cut nuclear output by 4.1 gigawatts Wednesday because high river temperatures limited access to cooling water, Reuters reported. In the United Kingdom, more than 1,000 schools closed or shortened the day, and rail operators including the Gatwick Express canceled or reduced services and urged riders to travel only if "absolutely necessary."
Across Europe
Spain's Aemet weather service issued red alerts for temperatures of 44 C in Andalusia and 40 C in the normally temperate Basque Country. The Dutch service KNMI placed southern and central regions under Code Orange through Friday with highs of 39 C forecast, and Belgium activated the alert phase of its national heat plan for only the second time, the first being August 2020. Italy added Latina to 16 provincial capitals under red alerts. Switzerland's St. Gallen canton restricted water withdrawals from rivers and lakes.
The Washington Examiner highlighted the human cost of unsupervised swimming, citing Lecornu's description of the drownings as a "tragic scourge" and Sports Minister Marie Barsacq's warning against entering hazardous waters. Among the dead were a six-year-old boy at an unsupervised beach in Begles and a 17-year-old girl in a prohibited stretch of the Marne river.
Meteo France forecast peak temperatures Wednesday and Thursday, with the U.K. Met Office expecting highs of 38 C in southern England on Thursday. Relief is forecast to arrive Friday with thunderstorms carrying a risk of flash flooding and hail.