The meteorologists agree: The long hot spell gripping parts of Europe this past week is uncommon.
People looking for relief from the heat in countries like France, Spain and Italy grappled for just the right name for the phenomenon — and settled on “Lucifer.”
The waves of heat sent temperatures soaring to record highs for several days, caused at least two deaths, kindled wildfires and drove tempers through the roof.
In France, people congregated around fountains to bask in the meager sprays, or simply to dive in.
In Romania, the police banned heavy traffic on major roads, and trains slowed to a relative crawl.
Animal rights groups in Serbia’s capital, Belgrade, urged citizens to place bowls of water outside their buildings and in parks for stray dogs.
High temperatures this summer have brought punishing heat to regions in the United States like the Pacific Northwest — where generations had shunned air-conditioning — reaching as high as 104 in Seattle and 107 in Portland, Ore. In parts of Asia, like Pakistan, a blast of scorching weather this year also had people there reaching for comparisons to hell on earth as records fell.
Experts say it’s all part of a broader trend: Summers are, indeed, getting hotter. Here is what our correspondents across Europe reported about the heat on the Continent.
Where gum is melting
Sun-kissed Italy has become sun-cursed. With temperatures in recent days regularly rising north of 100 degrees, a nationwide drought leaving rivers and mouths dry and countryside kindling and arsonists combining to ignite the landscape, Italians are, well, boiling.
Farmers are lamenting more than $1 billion in revenue lost to drought and singed fields. Firefighters are busy. Packs of gum are melting in their wrappers.
In Rome, the heat wave has coincided with a meltdown of public services, including public transport. The city’s older residents bunch together in the narrow shade of bus stop signs waiting for buses that are late or out of service.
On trams without air-conditioning, women fanned themselves and children, slicked with sweat, across the aisle.
(In Italy, air-conditioning is viewed, even by doctors in offices without air-conditioning, as a malevolent, unnatural force responsible for stiff necks, respiratory ailments and anything else not easily diagnosable. Taxi drivers refuse to turn it on as a public health service.)
In Venice, tourists are cramming with their suitcases onto the city’s water buses, their arms squeezed clammily together. Tempers are running as high as the temperatures. On a recent afternoon, a water bus driver instructed a woman to carry her suitcase to the lower deck.
“I can’t,” the woman, visibly sweating, snapped. “I’m old!”
Italians who can do it have escaped to the seaside, where they have summer houses or apartments or spots in camping ports. The beaches on the western coast of Tuscany are packed with Italians wading up to their knees and splashing their shoulders.
On Sunday afternoon, in Castiglione della Pescaia, on the coast of Maremma, the manager of a restaurant apologetically explained that the air-conditioning wasn’t working because the air was too hot to be conditioned.
JASON HOROWITZ
Trains slow to a crawl
In Romania, two people died from the heat last week — a 45-year-old man working in a field in the northeast part of the country and a 60-year-old man along the Black Sea coast. In Bucharest, the government warned people to stay indoors during the hottest hours.
Trucks and heavy traffic were ordered off the main highways over the weekend. Trains had also been running slower than usual in Romania because of the heat.
But by Sunday, the hottest of the weather had pushed to the south, and only two of Romania’s southernmost counties were still under a “red alert” warning for high temperatures.
In southern Serbia, the heat got so bad that some train tracks warped and service had to be suspended.
In Slovenia, which hugs the eastern edge of the Alps, the ski resort of Vogel saw its first “tropical night” on Wednesday, marking the first time at that altitude (1,500 meters, or about 4,920 feet) that overnight temperatures failed to dip below 68 degrees.
RICK LYMAN
The pain in Spain
About half of Spain was placed under an emergency alert over the weekend because of the heat wave, as forecasts predicted temperatures of up to 111 degrees Fahrenheit (44 degrees Celsius).
In the southern city of Córdoba, the temperature reached almost 113 degrees on Friday afternoon. However, no major incident was reported, and the continuing high temperatures are slightly milder than that experienced in mid-July in Spain, when the temperature reached a record of almost 117 degrees in Córdoba.
RAPHAEL MINDER
Step away from the alcohol
The public health institute in Serbia’s capital offered residents simple instructions for beating the heat:
• Keep wet towels on the windows if you don’t have air-conditioning.
• Avoid physical exertion.
• Avoid alcohol.
No relief at nighttime
The heat wave that hit southeastern France throughout the week increased pollution levels. The authorities also issued safety warnings on proper hydration as thousands of incoming and departing vacationers clogged roads across the region.
Corsica was hit especially hard. Nighttime offered no respite to inhabitants of Marignana, a village on the island where the temperature stayed at nearly 87 degrees Fahrenheit on Monday night into Tuesday.
On Wednesday, France’s national electricity provider announced that energy consumption on the island had reached a record high the previous night.
The French Riviera was not spared either, especially inland. In Puget-Théniers, a village about 25 miles northwest of Nice in the Alpes-Maritimes Department, the national weather forecaster registered a record high of 104 degrees Fahrenheit on Tuesday.
In several areas of the neighboring Alpes-de-Haute-Provence Department, local authorities prohibited irrigating land, watering lawns or filling up swimming pools between 11 a.m. and 6 p.m.
In the port of Marseille, a dozen students were hired by the town hall to check in on the city’s older residents by calling them or visiting their homes, a summertime measure that was begun in 2003 after a particularly deadlyheat wave.
On Sunday, however, the national weather forecaster lifted its heat-wave warning, as temperatures decrease across the region.
AURELIEN BREEDEN
Burning up, literally
Summer means the start of a dangerous dry season for many parts of Europe. In Portugal, a raging forest fire in June killed scores of people, some of whom were trapped in their cars, and forced many to flee their homes. And last month, fires forced the evacuation of over 20,000 in southern France.
Wildfires revisited parts of France this week, burning for days near the town of Palneca, and torching more than 400 acres of forest.
On Friday morning, a wildfire in the southern Greek island of Kythira, southwest of Athens, led to the evacuation of a village and power cuts.
It was contained but flared again on Saturday as the wind picked up, reports said. No homes have been reported damaged and there are no reports of fatalities.
Temperatures were forecast to reach 108 degrees in parts of mainland Greece over the weekend.
Hail as big as tennis balls
Polish officials have been warning of possible infrastructure failures as the country’s electricity demand set a record for a summer morning at 23.82 gigawatts last Tuesday.
At the peak of the heat wave, employers in public administrations in several communes in the east and southeast of Poland ordered their employees to leave work two hours early.
Scorching temperatures also caused dramatic weather breakdowns, including strong storms that brought a whirlwind, as well as hail the size of tennis balls, injuring dozens of people across the country.
JOANNA BERENDT
What heat wave?
Of course, there were some parts of Europe (London, anyone?) that have escaped the blistering heat.
“There is no heat in Germany. It is a cool 68F in Berlin, and even chillier in Munich. Parts of Austria are being flooded, so there is no heat in the German-speaking world. Reports here are that Spain and Portugal are also burning up.”MELISSA EDDY“No sweltering in Moscow. Been the coldest summer for years. Today was considered ‘hot,’ but temp only rose to low 70s. Much the same in Baltics, where I was yesterday: Rained solidly.”ANDREW HIGGINS
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