Saturday must be the hottest day of this early heat wave.
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Summer hasn’t started yet, but France is already suffocating under an intense heat wave of unprecedented precocity, Saturday June 18. In the afternoon, “it will generally be between 38 and 41°C in Aquitaine, Poitou-Charentes, Centre-Val-de-Loire, western Burgundy and Ile-de-France. Peaks around 42°C are even possible locally in southern Aquitaine Absolute temperature records could then be broken”, warns Météo-France in its last bulletin on Saturday.
After a sweltering night, Saturday must be the hottest day of this early heat wave.
A total of 14 departments are on red alert, with Pyrénées-Atlantiques and Hautes-Pyrénées having been added to the list on Friday. And 56 others, from the Paris region to the German border as well as from Brittany to the Lyon region are in the orange.
Records for the month of June were broken on Friday in at least 11 municipalities, including Carcassonne (Aude) with 40.4° and Saintes (Charente-Maritime) with 40°. The thermometer reached the 34.9°C in Saint-Brieuc (Côtes-d’Armor), 35.5°C in Dinard (lle-et-Vilaine). Two monthly records had already been broken on Thursday. “This is the earliest heat wave ever recorded in France” since 1947, underlined Friday Matthieu Sorel, climatologist at Météo France, on franceinfo. “Many monthly, even absolute records (…) should be broken in several regions”he warns, seeing a “marker of climate change”.