MAPS. Which are the fifty cities where it is the hottest in summer in France?

Seven departments on heatwave orange vigilance, temperatures expected to exceed 40°C in certain places in Provence and Corsica… The South-East of France is experiencing an episode of high heat on Tuesday July 18. It is, in fact, all of southern Europe which is under the yoke of a heat dome, which panics the mercury in Italy, Spain and Greece where impressive fires have broken out in the region of ‘Athens.

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The summer of 2022, in France, had already been particularly hot, while probably being one of the coolest in the rest of the 21st century. And it is not the summer of 2023 that will contradict this, with temperature records broken when the south-eastern quarter of the country: Météo France announces that, locally, historically high thresholds have been reached. But which cities are the hottest in summer?

To find out, we analyzed the normal temperatures of Météo France over the period 1991-2020 in its main measuring stations. And unsurprisingly, the fifty cities with the highest average summer temperatures are in the southern half of the country.

It is in Marignane, in the Bouches-du-Rhône, that it is on average the hottest, with a normal temperature of 24.5°C in summer. This means that it averaged 24.5°C in this town during the summer season between 1991 and 2020. This average obviously hides the heat peaks. The maximum recorded in the municipality is thus 39.7 degrees.

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The prevalence of hot days in the South is also revealed on this second map which shows the average number of days when the temperature exceeded 30°C in summer in the same weather stations.