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The record spring heat wave in France left tourists at the Louvre sheltering from the sun under umbrellas.<\/p>\n
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the country’s weather service said Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke seasonal highs in England and Wales.<\/p>\n
Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature from March to May was 13.8C\u2014about 1.7C above normal and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020.<\/p>\n
“The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin.<\/p>\n
All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heat wave” in late May pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of summer.<\/p>\n
“Our country had never before reached such high temperatures at this time of year; numerous monthly records were broken,” the weather service said.<\/p>\n
France’s soils<\/a>\u2014which were very wet at the beginning of spring\u2014had become “very dry” by the end of the season because of the heat wave and a lack of rainfall, the weather service said.<\/p>\n France, Britain and Portugal all reported their hottest-ever May days as a “heat dome<\/a>” of warm air from northern Africa pushed temperatures well above normal across Western Europe.<\/p>\n It was also the hottest-ever spring for England and Wales, but only the third-hottest overall for the United Kingdom, the country’s Met Office said Monday.<\/p>\n In some locations, temperature records were exceeded by 2C as the heat wave helped drive “an exceptional end to the season,” the U.K. weather service said.<\/p>\n Farther north, Norway’s Meteorological Institute also announced Tuesday the country’s hottest spring since record-keeping began in 1901.<\/p>\n The Scandinavian nation escaped the late May heat wave, but average temperatures were still 2.1C above the seasonal norm, the institute said, with particular warmth in the country’s north.<\/p>\n Europe is the fastest-warming continent<\/a> on Earth, in part because it is connected to the Arctic, where bright snow and ice are melting and revealing darker, heat-absorbing surfaces such as land and ocean.<\/p>\n
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