Europe on high alert as killer heat set to move east and south
By Juliette Jabkhiro, Charlotte Van Campenhout and Sam Tabahriti
PARIS/AMSTERDAM/LONDON, June 26 (Reuters) – Health authorities across Europe were on high alert on Friday as a deadly heatwave spread across the continent; It led to alcohol bans and the cancellation of mass gatherings in France, and to melting of road surfaces in Germany.
The heatwave, which started on June 20, was the worst ever recorded in Europe, where the climate is changing faster than anywhere else in the world, scientists said.
Temperatures reached their peak in France and England, where June records were broken. However, in Italy, the heat was expected to intensify towards the weekend and the first temperature values of summer were expected to be 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit).
Paris broke its June record with 40.9 C on Wednesday. Although the temperature was expected to decrease, authorities were prepared for the possibility of more casualties.
Across the continent, cultural structures were forced to close and farming suffered. Doctors in England said hot weather was affecting critical equipment such as MRI scanners in hospitals.
Paris police have asked organizers of major events, including the Solidays music festival, to cancel. Pride festival organizers said they would reschedule.
ENGLAND AND NETHERLANDS IN CODE RED
Extreme heat caused the surface of the A2 motorway in Germany to buckle and break apart in many lanes on Thursday evening. In Austria, the national railway company warned that train tracks may bend in the coming days.
The 36.9C temperature meant the record for Britain’s hottest June day was broken for three consecutive days, as the British Met Office extended its red heat alert covering a wide swath of southern and eastern England into a third day for the first time. Hundreds of schools remained closed and London’s emergency services said calls for help had increased by 50%. A teenage boy has died after wading into a lake in central England, police said.
A red alert was issued for almost all of the Netherlands and many schools were closed as temperatures were expected to rise to 40 degrees, leaving visitors miserable.
“I was expecting ‘hot’, but it wasn’t this hot,” said 20-year-old New Zealander Ruby Prescott, hoping for cooler weather at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam’s main art gallery.
Electric fans flew off the shelves in Britain and Asian air conditioner makers reported booming sales in Europe. In France, state-owned power utility EDF has pledged to spend 80 million euros ($90 million) on cooling systems for schools and nurseries.
Much of the housing stock in normally cold to temperate Northern Europe is built to keep warmth in, not to withstand such heat. According to the latest data from the OECD’s International Energy Agency (IEA), published in July 2025, household air conditioning ownership in Europe remains relatively low at around 20%.
‘OMEGA BLOCK’ HEAT FINDING IN EUROPE
The heatwave, which has pushed temperatures as much as 18C above the seasonal average, according to the Reuters Climate Monitor, is being driven by a weather pattern known as the Omega block.
This traps a bulging ball of warm air, with cooler air around its edges, over regions for long periods of time.
The World Meteorological Organization said that the current heat wave rising from the Iberian Peninsula to Western Europe will begin to change towards the end of the month and will hit Central Europe and the Balkans.
Record-breaking heatwave would have been “almost impossible” without man-made climate change, scientists said; That makes the likelihood of this week’s sweltering nighttime temperatures 100 times greater than it was two decades ago.
“This heat wave in the region studied is the most severe heat wave ever recorded,” the World Weather Attribution group of climate scientists said in their latest analysis.
HOSPITALS FEEL THE NECESSITY
Hilary Williams, clinical vice-president of Britain’s Royal College of Physicians, said overcrowding and heat in hospital wards were putting patients, staff and infrastructure under serious pressure.
“People are very hot,” he told BBC Radio, adding that some critical equipment, including MRI scanners and cancer treatment machines, had been affected by the heat.
French doctors and hospital staff reported an increase in emergency calls and treatments.
Patrick Pelloux, an emergency room doctor in Paris and president of the French Association of Emergency Physicians, confirmed that 55 people died in emergency medical services in Paris in 24 hours.
“Fifty-five is a huge number. Normally there are three or four in 24 hours. This is really excess deaths (due to the heatwave), that’s very clear.”
(Reporting by Juliette Jabkhiro, Inti Landauro, Sudip Kar-Gupta, Makini Brice, Nicolas Delame, Friederike Heine, Giselda Vagnoni, Sam Tabahriti, Olivia Le Poidevin and Bart Meijer; Writing by Michele Kambas; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
