Web desk(National Times)- Europe braced on Wednesday for another day of a sweltering heatwave that has smashed records, left tens of thousands of people without power and sent air conditioner sales zooming in a continent unused and ill-equipped to handle searing heat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The extreme weather is being driven by atmospheric patterns that keep hot air trapped in place for days, with these factors worsened by global warming, experts say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
France\u2019s national temperature indicator \u2014 an average of daytime and nighttime temperatures across 30 stations \u2014 reached 29.8 \u00b0C on Tuesday, the hottest since measurements began in 1947.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With four more French departments being put under the highest heat alert category on Wednesday, around 44 million people are affected, according to AFP<\/em> calculations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Added to the 31 departments currently on orange alert, more than 90 per cent of the French population is exposed to extreme heat, with temperatures of 39\u00b0C to 41\u00b0C expected on Wednesday from Brittany to the Paris region, and in much of the southwest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The heatwave caused the country\u2019s first major power outage of the latest bout of extreme weather, after a heat-related incident with a transformer left around 68,000 households on Wednesday without electricity in the northwestern Finistere department, the authorities said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While teams worked through the night to fix the issue, which took place late Tuesday, power is not expected to be restored in full until the end of Wednesday at the earliest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Up to 106,000 clients of the French power network were left without power by late Tuesday, as the scorching temperatures strain infrastructure built for the days before man-driven climate change made heatwaves longer, more frequent and more intense, according to scientists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sales of fans and air conditioners skyrocketed in a country where most buildings are not designed to cope with extreme heat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On Monday, hypermarket operator Carrefour had sold 30,000 units by 6:30pm \u2014 \u201ca thousand times more than on a normal day\u201d, CEO Alexandre Bompard said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sales on Amazon nearly doubled last week compared with the same period in 2025, while the electronics outlet Fnac Darty reported double-digit growth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thierry, an electrician in southwest France, said he was overwhelmed by requests for \u201cemergency\u201d air-conditioning installations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIn theory, you have to submit a request to the owners\u2019 association general meeting\u201d in residential complexes, \u201cbut people don\u2019t want to wait\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s difficult to live alone and without air conditioning,\u201d said Martine Belloc, a 62-year-old retiree in Bordeaux, who on Tuesday went to La ManuCo, a coworking site that mobilised to welcome elderly people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n John Beeler, a 45-year-old American engineer, said he and his wife were baking in the French capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cVisiting Paris in this heat is awful,\u201d he told AFP<\/em>, wearing a fisherman\u2019s hat and holding a small fan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe\u2019re suffocating in the streets, we\u2019re suffocating in the subway and we\u2019re even suffocating in our rental,\u201d he said, adding that they would be moving to an air-conditioned hotel room.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Italy\u2019s health ministry declared a red heatwave alert in 16 cities on Wednesday, including Milan and Rome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The heatwave is expected to extend into eastern Europe in the coming days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Poland\u2019s weather service issued high-level heat warnings for the western part of the country from Thursday to Saturday, forecasting temperatures could break the record of 40.2\u00b0C set in 1921.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Croatia\u2019s popular Adriatic coast was also put under red alert for Friday and Saturday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hungary, already under a second-level heat alert, said it was raising that to the maximum level from Saturday to Tuesday as temperatures continued to rise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The current heatwave is \u201csignificantly exacerbated by human-induced climate change\u201d, without which the current temperatures would have been 2 to 4\u00b0C cooler, according to a scientific study published this week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But some relief could start to come from the west on Wednesday, when Spain\u2019s national weather service said temperatures would drop in most of the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But no quick temperature drop is in sight across much of the rest of western Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n From Wednesday until at least Friday, the central and southern Netherlands will be under a code orange for extreme heat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Anyone living in Amsterdam with a city pass may swim for free in six city outdoor pools, while the national rail company NS will run fewer trains on a number of routes starting Wednesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Britain, James Bowen, assistant general secretary at the National Association of Head Teachers, told AFP<\/em> that \u201cpretty much every school up and down the UK will be having to make some form of adaptation this week in light of the extreme heat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI think it\u2019s fair to say that the school estate in the UK is not well prepared for this level of heat,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After some of France\u2019s most visited sites, such as the Louvre museum and the Eiffel Tower, decided to limit visiting hours, the management of one of Belgium\u2019s best-known monuments, the space-age Atomium in Brussels, said it would close earlier to visitors from Wednesday to Friday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Web desk(National Times)- Europe braced on Wednesday for another day of a sweltering heatwave that has smashed records, left tens of thousands of people without power and sent air conditioner sales zooming in a continent unused and ill-equipped to handle searing heat. The extreme weather is being driven by atmospheric patterns that keep hot air […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":128180,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-128179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest_news","entry"],"yoast_head":"\n<\/a>\u2018We\u2019re suffocating\u2019<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>No quick relief<\/h2>\n\n\n\n