The longest day of the year arrives with weather borrowed from August. A punishing heatwave stretches from the Atlantic toward the Alps, and in the corridors of power the season has turned from advice to instruction: crisis meetings in Paris, near-nationwide alerts in Germany, records in Britain within reach.
France sits at the centre of it. Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu convened a crisis meeting on Saturday, and its first consequence was concrete: alcohol is banned from Sunday’s Fete de la Musique celebrations in every department placed under the top red heatwave alert. “For all events organized by the state and its agencies, instructions have been given not to offer alcohol,” the prime minister’s office said in a statement. Meteo France placed 35 departments, Paris among them, on red alert, with 41 degrees Celsius possible on Sunday and the peak a day later: 37 to 42 degrees on Monday. The festival drew nearly 2 million people to the capital last year; a solstice street party under such a sky is no abstract concern.
Against this backdrop, one summer haunts every French communiqué. August 2003 left 14,800 people dead in France, most of them elderly, and Meteo France says the present episode will be similar, in day and night temperatures alike, to 2003 and July 2019. Sunday’s forecast stretches a band of 39 to 40 degrees from the south-west across the capital and on into Burgundy, and Paris itself could pass 40 degrees on a June day for the first time.
The wider picture crosses borders. Germany is under heat alerts almost everywhere, with temperatures approaching 38 degrees, and the DWD weather service warns that heat combined with humidity could set off severe thunderstorms. Britain expects more than 35 degrees on Tuesday and Wednesday across southern England and Wales, and the Met Office puts the chance of breaking the June record of 35.6 degrees, set in 1976, at 40 per cent.
In Italy, the heat is measured in small daily gestures. At the Colosseum the sightseeing queue inches forward under a merciless sun, and the resourceful slip into the cooler chambers beneath the buried remains of the Temple of Claudius. In Bologna, among the hottest cities of the peninsula, faces are splashed at the 16th-century Neptune fountain and shelter taken beneath the porticoes. Paris ordered its parks to stay open around the clock.
What is at stake goes beyond a sweltering weekend. A warming climate is intensifying such heatwaves across the continent and multiplying the risks to health and to commerce. Bank of France Governor Emmanuel Moulin called the short-term effect on growth “somewhat ambiguous”, productivity losses partly offset by extra energy demand, though he cautioned that the drag builds over the medium term. The continent has lived through such summers before; each one now arrives a little earlier, and stays a little longer.
Sources
- Europe swelters under heatwave, prompting crisis talks in France – ABC News
- Europe heatwave triggers curbs and warnings – Pakistan Today
- France bans alcohol during Fete de la Musique amid heat wave – DW (with Reuters)
