![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1782347733_611_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Parisians bathe in the Canal Saint-Martin in Paris, as the national weather service, Meteo France, placed 54 departments, about half the country, under a red heat wave alert on Tuesday, June 23. Associated Press<\/p>\n
PARIS \u2014 France recorded its hottest day ever Tuesday as an early heat wave gripped Europe<\/a>, prompting the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre museum to restrict visiting hours and disrupting school and transportation schedules in multiple countries.<\/p>\n Punishing temperatures extended to the United Kingdom and Spain, where weather agencies issued red alerts \u2014 like France \u2014 about the risks of extreme heat for tens of millions of people.<\/p>\n The record of 85.6 F for France\u2019s national thermal indicator \u2014 an average of temperatures measured at 30 weather stations \u2014 was only the latest in a series of never-before-registered highs heaped on Europe\u2019s third-largest country<\/a>. The conditions were likely to persist at least until the weekend.<\/p>\n \u201cFurther record-breaking temperatures are expected, including some that could surpass all previous records, regardless of the time of year,\u201d the Meteo France weather service said.<\/p>\n France’s previous hottest days were recorded during heat waves of August 2003 and July 2019, with an average temperature of 84.9 F.<\/p>\n Temperature records also tumbled at individual weather stations and on consecutive days in some towns as daytime highs climbed well above 104 F, Meteo France said.<\/p>\n In the French capital, Gin Dujardin said the heat forced him to halt his work fixing roofs, which in Paris often have galvanized zinc coverings.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s very, very hard because the zinc is very hot. The welds don\u2019t hold,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s Dubai temperatures. It\u2019s impossible.\u201d<\/p>\n France has recorded 40 fatalities from drowning in the past week as people seek relief in rivers and other bodies of water, despite authorities\u2019 warnings about unsupervised swimming. Most of the drownings involved young people, Prime Minister S\u00e9bastien Lecornu said.<\/p>\n Meteo France said the heat wave has reached what it described as a \u201cplateau of severity,\u201d with unrelenting heat, day and night. A growing number of regions will tip into the red again Wednesday as the heat spreads across more than half of the country, including the northernmost tip of France, the weather service said.<\/p>\n Human-caused climate change<\/a> is tied to increasingly extreme weather, and U.N. climate agency projections say the next five years are likely to shatter more heat records<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Louvre and the Eiffel Tower close early<\/p>\n In a country without widespread air conditioning<\/a>, schools, public transportation and sporting events have been affected. In Paris, the Eiffel Tower closed in the afternoon instead of late at night, as it usually does. The Louvre museum said it would close two hours earlier than normal from Wednesday through Saturday.<\/p>\n \u201cAlthough parts of its historic building are naturally resilient, the museum remains vulnerable and is not sufficiently adapted to climate change,\u201d Louvre officials said. \u201cHeat buildup is greatest toward the end of the day and is further intensified by high visitor numbers.\u201d<\/p>\n This heat wave, coming early in the summer, has already been compared to the August 2003 heat wave that roasted France with the highest temperatures in over half a century. It caused an estimated 15,000 deaths, many of them among older people in apartments and retirement homes without air conditioning.<\/p>\n Europe is the world\u2019s fastest-warming continent, with temperatures increasing twice as fast as the global average since the 1980s, according to the European Union\u2019s Copernicus Climate Change Service. Over the last four years, more than 200,000 people across Europe died from heat-related causes, and most of those deaths were preventable, the World Health Organization\u2019s Europe office said this month.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1782347734_754_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1782347734_703_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1782347735_233_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1782347736_328_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n