A woman cools off in Bordeaux on August 8, 2025, as a heatwave spreads across the south of France. PHILIPPE LOPEZ / AFP
The heatwave that began Friday, the second to hit France this summer, extended on Sunday, August 10, to almost the entire southern half of the country, with French weather forecaster Météo-France placing 42 departments under an orange heatwave alert and seven under a yellow alert.
“On Sunday, following the trend of previous days, the heat will intensify again in the south,” the national forecasting service warned on Saturday. Temperatures were expected to “frequently” reach 40°C, or even surpass that mark, in the Hérault, Var, and the southern parts of the Ardèche and Drôme departments. At the hottest point of the day, 42°C was forecast for Nîmes and 40°C for Perpignan, with peaks of 38°C in Bordeaux and Toulouse.
From the Pyrénées-Atlantiques to the Jura, and from Charente-Maritime to the Alpes-Maritimes, 42 departments in the southern half of the country are classified under an orange heatwave alert. Five additional departments further north, from Vendée to Côte-d’Or, are under a yellow alert, as are both departments in Corsica.
This heatwave, which “requires particular vigilance, especially for vulnerable or exposed individuals,” stressed Météo-France, could intensify at the start of the week.
On Saturday, 42.2°C was recorded in Tiranges in Haute-Loire, and 39°C in Lyon, in a region where temperatures were expected to “slightly” decrease on Sunday, according to the institute.
‘Acceleration in the occurrence of heatwaves’
On Monday, 46 central and southern departments will be placed under an orange alert, which covers more than half of mainland France. The departments of Deux-Sèvres, Vienne, Creuse, and Haute-Corse will move to this alert level as of midday Sunday. Only Corse-du-Sud is expected to remain under a yellow alert in the southern half of the country. Sixteen other departments will also be placed under a yellow alert.
“The peak is expected between Monday and Tuesday” for this heatwave, which “should last until the end of next week,” Météo-France said.
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After an initial heatwave this year from June 19 to July 4, this is the 51st recorded in France since 1947. According to Météo-France, which noted “an acceleration in the occurrence of heatwaves” linked to climate change, the country experienced only two summers without such an episode in the past 16 years.
‘Very high’ fire risk in Vaucluse
The institute also classified the Vaucluse department in the south as facing a “very high” fire risk on Sunday. Ten departments along the Mediterranean coast and its hinterland, as well as five others in the center-west, were placed under a “high” risk warning.
In Aude, the fire – which has covered 16,000 hectares this week, including 13,000 that have burned according to the civil protection agency – was not expected to be “contained” before Sunday evening, due to weather conditions “similar to those at the time the fire began,” firefighters warned, with a hot, dry wind blowing at 50 km/h against the backdrop of the heatwave.
Meanwhile, SNCF, France’s national railway company, canceled several round trips on the Intercités lines between Bordeaux and Marseille, Paris-Limoges-Toulouse, and Paris-Clermont, fearing “potential air conditioning failures” on its oldest carriages due to the rising temperatures.
Translation of an original article published in French on lemonde.fr; the publisher may only be liable for the French version.