France, Britain, and Portugal all recorded their hottest days ever for the month of May during a heat wave that spread across northern Europe and led to multiple deaths.
France's weather service, Meteo-France, warned on Saturday that strong storms would mark the end of the heat wave. Temperatures in the Paris region remained above 33 degrees Celsius on Saturday, and several other parts of France stayed above 30 degrees Celsius throughout the day.
France's highest recorded temperature during the event was 37.8 degrees Celsius, measured in the Charente department. The heat forced train service cancellations and caused power cuts in multiple cities. Some deaths in both France and Britain were attributed to the heat.
According to Phys.org, Meteo-France said that the arrival of a slightly cooler air mass would bring temperatures down Saturday night. But the agency also warned of storms moving across northern France that would be localized but potentially strong, with hail and wind gusts exceeding 80 kilometers per hour.
The warnings were particularly relevant for Paris, where large crowds gathered for multiple major events. The Arsenal-Paris Saint-Germain Champions League football final, the French Open tennis tournament, and several large concerts all took place in the city, putting significant numbers of people outdoors during the dangerous weather window.
Meteo-France specialist Mattieu Sorel said it was "highly likely" that France would see more extreme heat waves later this summer. That forecast follows a broader pattern that meteorologists across Europe have been tracking, as consecutive summers have brought record-breaking temperatures to countries that historically had moderate climates.
The May records set across three countries in a single heat wave event are notable. Britain and Portugal both exceeded any previous May temperature on record, as did France. The concentration of record-breaking readings across multiple countries in the same event points to a regional atmospheric pattern rather than isolated local conditions.
The storms that Meteo-France predicted would end the heat wave were expected to be temporary relief rather than a lasting change in conditions, given the agency's forecast for continued extreme heat later in the season.
