France logs its hottest May day on record as a heat dome drives temperatures to 37.1C
France recorded its hottest May day in history on Monday, with Meteo France logging new monthly highs at 352 weather stations and a peak of 37.1C near Hossegor in the south-west. Climate scientists put the odds of such heat in May at roughly one in 1,000, blaming a powerful heat dome made more likely by human-caused warming. The agency warned the extreme heat would persist into Tuesday, with several deaths already linked to the event.
France has recorded its hottest May day since records began, the national weather agency Meteo France said, with new monthly temperature highs logged at 352 weather stations, mainly in the west of the country. The highest reading, 37.1C, was registered near Hossegor, close to Biarritz in the south-west.
Climate scientists described the event as "unprecedented," estimating it had a one-in-1,000 chance of occurring at this time of year, based on records dating back to 1979. Forecasters attributed the heat to a "highly anomalous and powerful" heat dome -- an atmospheric pattern that locks heatwaves in place and is becoming more common as the planet warms.
The agency, which had issued its first-ever May heatwave alert over the weekend as the dome built, warned that temperatures would stay high. On Tuesday, 26 May, daytime maximums were forecast to reach 35C in Nantes; 34C in Paris, Lyon, Toulouse and Bordeaux; and 30C as far north as Lille.
The heatwave has already been potentially linked to several deaths, including a 53-year-old runner who died on Sunday during a race in Paris.
The episode follows a punishing 2025, when France endured repeated heatwaves and the Aude region suffered one of its worst wildfires in 50 years. The EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service found that France experienced about 15 more "summer days" than average last year, with the south-west running roughly 6C above the seasonal maximum at the peak. A rapid analysis by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine attributed about 68 percent of an estimated 24,000 heat deaths across 854 European cities to climate change, including 1,444 heat deaths in France, with Paris among the highest tolls.
France has been preparing for such extremes. After its 2023 "Paris at 50C" crisis exercise, the capital has planted more than 100,000 trees since 2020 and removed over 6,000 parking spaces and 1.3 hectares of asphalt to green its streets. "The countries that will fare best in the coming decade are not the ones with the most money -- they are the ones that treat heat as a public health emergency rather than a weather story," Ionna Vergini, founder of the forecaster WFY24, told Euronews Earth. At April's Santa Marta summit, France published a roadmap to end coal use by 2030, oil by 2045 and gas for energy by 2050, alongside a ban on gas boilers in new buildings from 2026.