The heat wave of unprecedented precocity which hits southern Europe reached a peak on Saturday in France with “points close to 42/43°”, and absolute records, while in Spain firefighters are trying to control a giant fire.
Nearly three quarters of the French population, i.e. 45 million people, are concerned by the red or orange levels of heatwave vigilance.
The heat increased further on Saturday afternoon, especially in the South-West where “peaks close to 42°/43°C” were measured locally in southern Aquitaine, adds Météo-France.
“Absolute temperature records have been broken,” she explains, with in particular 42.9°C in Biarritz, or 2.3°C more than the previous record dating from 2003.
In the South East, a fire caused by artillery fire at a major French army training camp burned around 600 hectares of vegetation but was close to being fixed.
“It is an area which is a vegetated desert, there is no threat to anyone, apart from the 2,500 sheep which graze in this area and which have been sheltered”, specified in the Captain Olivier Pécot of the Var firefighters.
The heat sweeps the country from the southwest towards the northeast, adds the agency, which lists between 37 and 41 ° C in general on the southwest, the center and the Paris region.
Many festive, sporting and cultural events have also been canceled.
In some cities, museums welcome visitors in search of freshness. Bordeaux (south-west), where the mercury indicates 40 ° C according to Météo-France, has also made them free.
In Paris, at the Liberation Museum, of General Leclerc and Jean Moulin, Sonia De Man, 70, a Belgian tourist who came with her daughter, confided that she had “chosen to favor a museum during the day” rather than going to Montmartre, as planned. They will also be able to take advantage of the opening of the parks and gardens of Paris all night long.
From Saturday evening, occasional thunderstorms could however occur on the Atlantic coast, the beginnings of a deterioration expected for Sunday evening and which will allow the heat wave to “gradually decrease to no longer concern only the eastern flank of the country”, according to Météo -France.
Stubborn fires
The multiplication of heat waves in Europe is a direct consequence of global warming. Greenhouse gas emissions increase the strength, duration and rate of repetition of heat waves, scientists say.
The current wave arrived from the Maghreb via the Iberian Peninsula.
In Spain, firefighters continued to battle several blazes across the country, one of which ravaged nearly 20,000 hectares of land, as temperatures peaked at 43 degrees.
The largest of these forest fires was still out of control on Saturday afternoon in the Sierra de la Culebra, a mountain range in the region of Castile and Leon (northwest), near the border with Portugal. In total, nearly 20,000 hectares burned there.
Eleven villages with several hundred people had to be evacuated in the face of the threat of the flames, which led to the closure of a national road and a high-speed train line between Madrid and the region of Galicia (northwest) .
Spanish firefighters also continued to fight several fires in Catalonia and Navarre.
” It’s time to act “
The heat wave did not spare Germany either. On Saturday, the highest temperature was recorded at 36.4 degrees at 4 p.m. in Waghäusel-Kirrlach (Haut-Rhin), according to the German Meteorological Institute (DWD). The feared record highs of over 38 degrees were not reached, however.
In Brandenburg, the region around Berlin, a fire started on Friday and spread in the evening over around 60 hectares.
Another fire in the Trecktal valley, southwest of Berlin, is under control, but threatens to flare up again due to drought and high ground temperatures. Some 6.5 hectares of forest burned.
However, the first severe thunderstorms are expected overnight from Saturday to Sunday. According to the DWD, there could be local wind gusts to 95 km/h in northern Germany as well as hail and heavy rain.
In the Netherlands, Saturday is expected to be the hottest day of the year, authorities said.
Temperatures could reach 35° in the city of Limburg (south), according to the Dutch meteorological agency, which is particularly concerned about the consequences of the heat on “the elderly and vulnerable”.
Among the many other consequences of the heat wave, in Italy, cows’ milk production has dropped by 10%, with heat forcing them to drink up to 140 liters of water a day, twice as much as usual, the country’s main agricultural association, Coldiretti, said on Saturday.
The United Nations (UN) called on Friday to “act now” against drought and desertification in order to avoid “human disasters”.
“It’s time to act: every action counts,” said the executive secretary of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), Ibrahim Thiaw, during a conference in Madrid on the occasion of the World Drought Day.