Europe is bracing Wednesday for another day of sweltering heatwave that broke records, left tens of thousands without power and sent air conditioner sales soaring on a continent left unused and ill-equipped to cope with scorching heat.
These extreme weather conditions are caused by atmospheric conditions that keep warm air trapped for days, with these factors being made worse by global warming, experts said.
France’s national temperature indicator – an average of daytime and nighttime temperatures spread across 30 stations – reached 29.8℃ on Tuesday, the warmest since measurements began in 1947.
With four additional French departments placed in the highest heat alert category on Wednesday, around 44 million people are affected, according to AFP calculations.
Adding to the 31 departments currently on orange alert, more than 90% of the French population is exposed to extreme heat, with temperatures of 39℃ to 41℃ expected on Wednesday from Brittany to the Paris region, and across much of the southwest.
The heatwave caused the country’s first major power outage since the last wave of extreme weather, after a heat-related incident with a transformer left around 68,000 homes without power in the northwest department of Finistère on Wednesday, authorities said.
While crews worked through the night to resolve the problem, which occurred Tuesday evening, power is not expected to be fully restored until late Wednesday, at the earliest.
Up to 106,000 customers of France’s power grid were without power Tuesday evening, as scorching temperatures strain infrastructure built days before man-made climate change made heat waves longer, more frequent and more intense, scientists say.
Sales of fans and air conditioners have soared in a country where most buildings are not designed to cope with extreme heat.
Monday, at 6:30 p.m., the Carrefour hypermarket had sold 30,000 units, or “a thousand times more than a normal day”, declared its CEO Alexandre Bompard.
Sales on Amazon almost doubled last week compared to the same period in 2025, while electronics store Fnac Darty saw double-digit growth.
Thierry, an electrician from southwest France, says he is inundated with requests for “emergency” air conditioning installations.
“In theory, you have to present a request to the general meeting of co-owners” in residential complexes, “but people don’t want to wait.”
“It’s difficult to live” alone and without air conditioning, says Martine Belloc, a 62-year-old retiree from Bordeaux, who went on Tuesday to La ManuCo, a coworking site mobilized to accommodate elderly people.
“We are suffocating”
John Beeler, a 45-year-old American engineer, said he and his wife cooked in the French capital.
“Visiting Paris in this heat is horrible,” he said. AFPwearing a fisherman’s hat and holding a small fan.
“We are suffocating in the street, we are suffocating in the subway and we are even suffocating in our rental,” he said, adding that they would move into an air-conditioned hotel room.
The Italian Health Ministry declared a heatwave red alert in 16 cities, including Milan and Rome, on Wednesday.
The heatwave is expected to spread to Eastern Europe in the coming days.
Polish weather services issued high heat warnings for the western part of the country from Thursday to Saturday, predicting that temperatures could break the record of 40.2℃ set in 1921.
Croatia’s popular Adriatic coast was also placed on red alert on Friday and Saturday.
Hungary, already under a second-level heat alert, said it was increasing it to the maximum level from Saturday to Tuesday as temperatures continued to rise.
The current heatwave is “significantly exacerbated by human-induced climate change”, without which current temperatures would have been 2℃ to 4℃ cooler, according to a scientific study published this week.
But some relief could start coming from the west on Wednesday, when Spain’s national weather service said temperatures would drop across most of the country.
No quick relief
But no rapid drop in temperatures is in sight across much of the rest of western Europe.
From Wednesday to Friday at least, the center and south of the Netherlands will be under code orange for extreme heat.
Anyone living in Amsterdam with a city pass can swim for free in six outdoor pools in the city, while national rail company NS will run fewer trains on a number of routes from Wednesday.
In Britain, James Bowen, deputy general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said AFP that “almost all schools across the UK will have to adapt this week in light of the extreme heat”.
“I think it’s fair to say that the UK’s school estate is not well prepared for this level of heat,” he said.
After some of France’s most visited sites, such as the Louvre Museum and the Eiffel Tower, decided to limit visiting hours, the management of one of Belgium’s best-known landmarks, the Space Age Atomium in Brussels, announced that it would close early to visitors from Wednesday to Friday.
