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HEATWAVE

Record-breaking heat: What temperatures can we expect in France this week?

Temperature records were broken across France on Monday as the searing heatwave continues - here's a look at the forecast for the week and when the heatwave is expected to break.

Published: 18 July 2022 08:57 CEST
Updated: 19 July 2022 13:31 CEST
Record-breaking heat: What temperatures can we expect in France this week?
A road sign reads "Extreme Heat, drink water" as France experiences an extreme heatwave. Photo by Loic VENANCE / AFP

Monday saw red heat warnings for 15 départements on the west of the country and dozens of towns recorded their highest ever temperatures.

The mercury hit 39.3C in Brest on the Atlantic coast in the far northwest of the country compared with a previous record of 35.1C from 2002.

Saint-Brieuc on the Channel coast sizzled in 39.5C compared with a previous record of 38.1C, while western Nantes recorded 42C, beating a previous high of 40.3C set in 1949.

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The all-time high temperature recorded in mainland France dates to 2019 when the southern village of Verargues, north-east of Montpellier, experienced 46C, this was not broken although large parts of the rest of France saw temperatures over 40C on Monday.

The west coast, especially the north west, is usually one of the cooler areas of the country but this time was not spared by the heat.

Tuesday

Overnight from Monday to Tuesday the temperature did not drop below 25C anywhere, making for some sticky and uncomfortable nights, but from Tuesday morning the temperature will start to drop.

The drop will begin in the west, where temperatures are expected to fall sharply – 15C-20C in just a couple of hours. Further east, including Paris, temperatures will stay very high – above 40C – until Tuesday evening.

Overnight Tuesday there is a risk of stormy showers as the temperature falls suddenly.

Wednesday onwards

Rain showers, some heavy and with thunder, are likely on Wednesday but from Wednesday onwards temperatures will be back to seasonal norms – 25C-30C in the north and 30C-35C in the south. 

Fires

The intense heatwave has already caused multiple forest fires in France and elsewhere, and some farmers have taken to working at night to minimise the risk of a spark from their harvesting equipment starting a fire that destroys their crops.

Firefighters are still battling to control two massive wildfires in Gironde, south west France, where an area the size of Paris has already burned. Thousands of locals and tourists have been evacuated as the fires continue to rage.

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CLIMATE CRISIS

Rising sea levels threaten Normandy’s historic D-Day beaches

As France prepares to mark the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings, erosion and rising sea levels are threatening to strip away what remains of the physical history of the Allied invasion of Europe

Published: 7 May 2024 14:47 CEST
Updated: 11 May 2024 08:14 CEST
Rising sea levels threaten Normandy's historic D-Day beaches

From Ouistreham (Calvados) to Ravenoville (Manche), the Normandy coastline is littered with relics of June 1944. The Normandy tourism office lists more than 90 official D-Day sites, including 44 museums, drawing millions of visitors every year.

But the sea from where liberation came is now threatening to reclaim its heritage: cliffs and dunes are subject to erosion, while marshes and reclaimed land are at risk of being submerged.

The landscapes today of the famed beaches are nothing like the ones codenamed Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword, that the Allied forces endured in 1944, an official for the Conservatoire du Littoral in Normandy told AFP. 

The Gold Beach marshes in Ver-sur-Mer, “will be transformed in 10 years or so,” he added, as sea water rises to reclaim land that had been drained in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Mayor of Sainte-Marie-du-Mont and director of the Utah Beach Museum Charles de Vallavieille told Ouest France that  “we don’t have the right to do anything” to stop the advance of the sea. “The law protects dykes but not dunes,” he said. “We can’t get any help even though it’s a problem that affects the whole coast – protect one place and the water will go elsewhere”.

Pedestrians walk past remains of the British Artificial harbour at “Gold Beach”. (Photo by Lou BENOIST / AFP)

Between the American and British sectors, the Bessin cliffs – where German artillery batteries pummelled the beaches from hard-to-reach areas such as Pointe du Hoc – have been slowly falling to wave impacts, sea salt, freezes and thaws in the decades since 200 American rangers overran the occupying soldiers there. 

In 2010, the American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC), which manages the site, spent $6million to protect it. It “secured the area, [and] consolidated 70 metres […] with reinforced concrete walls, micropiles to stabilise the soil and a complex network of sensors monitoring the subsoil for any significant movement”.

Coastal pathways in the area have been “set back 20 metres” to ensure public safety, the ABMC has said.

But with sea levels rising a few millimetres a year, inexorably and inevitably changing the face of the coastline, nature is reclaiming the beaches of Normandy, and their blood-stained human history will become a matter of historical interpretation, rather physical fact.

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