Sixty-one departments will be placed on heatwave orange alert on Tuesday July 7, with temperatures forecast between 36 and 40°C, and some peaks at 41°C, Météo France confirmed Tuesday morning.
All the departments of the Île-de-France region, Burgundy, Centre-Val de Loire and Pays de la Loire will go into orange “heatwave” vigilance from Tuesday noon, the meteorological organization indicated in its 6:00 a.m. bulletin.
Finistère, Morbihan, Ille-et-Vilaine, Vienne and Haute-Vienne, Creuse, Corrèze, Pyrénées-Atlantiques, Hautes-Pyrénées, Gers, Haute-Garonne, Ariège, Tarn-et-Garonne, Tarn, Aveyron, Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, Puy-de-Dôme, Loire, Rhône, Allier, Isère, Savoie and Haute-Savoie are also affected. Only Hauts-de-France, the Channel coasts and the eastern coast of the country will remain below 35°C.
The specter of climate change
“An extension of the orange heat wave vigilance to other departments is likely with the next vigilance map,” warned Météo France, specifying that “the extreme heat will increase further on Tuesday and gain ground towards the north and east”.
In another bulletin, Météo France on Tuesday placed 61 departments at “high fire risk” and three at “very high risk”: Essonne, Deux-Sèvres and Vaucluse.
In the Pyrénées-Orientales, a fire led to the evacuation of 10,000 people and disrupted the Tour de France on Monday. On Wednesday, it anticipates a number of 40 departments in “high fire risk” and five in “very high risk”: Aude, Hérault, Gard, Vaucluse and Drôme. Repeated heatwaves are an unequivocal marker of climate change, mainly caused by the burning of coal, oil and gas, climatologists have shown. Météo France stressed that climatic conditions “strongly influence the start and spread of fires”.
