FRANCE: Spain, France and other western European nations sweltered over the weekend under a blistering June heatwave that has sparked forest fires and concerns such early summer blasts of hot weather will now become the norm.
The weekend’s soaring temperatures were the peak of a June heatwave in line with scientists’ predictions that such phenomena will now strike earlier in the year thanks to global warming.
The popular French south-western seaside resort of Biarritz saw its highest all-time temperature Saturday (June 18) afternoon of 42.9 deg C, state forecaster Meteo France said as authorities urged vigilance from the central western coast down to the Spanish border.
Queues of hundreds of people and traffic jams formed outside aquatic leisure parks in France, with people seeing water as the only refuge from the devastating heat.
With the River Seine off limits to bathing, scorched Parisians took refuge in the city’s fountains. Forest fires in Spain on Saturday had burned nearly 20,000ha (50,000 acres) of land in the northwest Sierra de la Culebra region.
Temperatures above 40 deg C were forecast in parts of the country with highs of 43 deg C expected in the northeastern Spanish city of Zaragoza.
There have also been fires in Germany, where temperatures were forecast to go as high as 40 deg C on Saturday but only reached 36 deg C. A blaze in the Brandenburg region around Berlin had spread over about 60 hectares by Friday evening.
- THE STRAITS TIMES
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