France shuts 2,000 schools & monuments: Here’s why!

PARIS: Nearly 2,000 schools in France were closed, monuments were closed to tourists, and cities across Europe were put on high alert as the first heat wave of the summer swept across the continent on Tuesday.

The scorching conditions that have been baking southern Europe for days are moving northward where such extremes are rare, with Paris on a “red alert” and warnings issued in Belgium, Switzerland and Germany.

Tens of thousands of people have died in past heatwaves in Europe, prompting authorities to issue warnings for the young and old, the sick and others who are exposed to what experts call the “silent killer.”

On Tuesday, police in Spain said a two-year-old child died in the country’s northeast after being left in a car in the sun for several hours.

The EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) warned that millions of Europeans are facing high heat stress, with temperatures expected to be “above average” across most continents in the coming days.

“This event is unusual because it is extreme, because it has started very early in the summer, and climate change has almost certainly made it worse than it would have been,” climate scientist and C3S deputy director Samantha Burgess told AFP.

Records have already been broken, with the Netherlands experiencing its warmest opening day of July, France and Portugal their highest single-day temperatures in June, and Spain and England their warmest June months.

On Sunday, in a case of two extremes, the Mediterranean Sea hit a new June temperature record while Europe’s highest peak, Mont Blanc, rose above freezing, a rarity for this time of year.