New heat records fell on Wednesday July 19, announced Météo-France. Several municipalities in the Alpes-Maritimes, one of the nine departments on heatwave orange vigilance, broke their monthly records for the month of July: Tende with 35 degrees, Le Castellet with 36 degrees and Caussols, located at 1,268 meters above sea level, with 31.3°C. France is not the only country affected by high temperatures. Several European countries have also issued a red heat wave alert on some of their regions: Italy, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia and Spain, reports Météo France.
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More than 200 European firefighters will be sent as reinforcements to Greece. Romanian, Slovak and Polish firefighters will be sent to Greece by Friday to fight the ongoing forest fires, the firefighting services said.
Thirteen departments affected by alerts. For Wednesday, Météo-France placed nine departments on orange alert. These are Bouches-du-Rhône, Gard, Hérault, Alpes-Maritimes, Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, Vaucluse, Corse-du-Sud and Haute-Corse, as well as Var, whose prefecture will close 5 massifs on Thursday for “high risk of fire”This list is supplemented by eight other departments classified yellow, namely Ardèche, Drôme, Hautes-Alpes and Pyrénées-Orientales.
Records broken on Tuesday. The thermometer exceeded 40°C on Tuesday for the first time in Verdun (40.6°C at 550 meters above sea level), in Ariège, and in Serralongue (40.4°C at 700m), in the Pyrenees -Orientales, according to provisional values recorded at 5 p.m. by Météo-France. Temperatures also broke records, including Alpe d’Huez (1,860m) with 29.5°C, Renno, in Corsica (755m) with 38.3°C, Aups, in the Var (497m) with 38 ,6°C, Vauvenargues in the Bouches-du-Rhône (565m) with 37.3°C. In all these municipalities, these records are 8 to 11.9°C above normal for the season.