This content was posted on June 17, 2022 – 3:12 PM June 17, 2022 – 3:12 PM
Paris, June 17 (EFE) 35 degrees in much of the country.
The Pyrenees-Atlantiques and Hautes-Pyrénées, whose capitals are Pau and Tarbes respectively, will be added to the twelve departments of the south-west Atlantic coast, according to the communication published this Friday by the national meteorological agency Météo-France.
In addition, there are 56 departments on orange alert – the second most severe – in the central, east and Paris regions, resulting in seventy departments on alert for the heatwave, which is only set to improve from Sunday afternoon, with the peak being tomorrow, Saturday, expected.
This red-alert surveillance system, which envisages maximum mobilization of health centers, dates back to 2004, a year after France’s historic heatwave of summer 2003, which claimed more than 15,000 lives in the country.
Orange alerts are more common, but it’s the first time a red alert has been activated at this point in June. The precedents had happened in the last days of the month and in July 2019 and August 2020.
The severe temperatures have prompted the Paris police prefecture to announce this Saturday a special device to try to reduce pollutant emissions and thus improve the quality of the air, which has been harmful to health for several days.
For this, the maximum speed on all motorways, national and departmental in the region will be reduced by 20 kilometers, while on the inner ring of the so-called second periphery of Paris only low-emission vehicles that meet the criteria of the label will be able to drive ‘Crit’ Air” granted by the government.
Similar measures were also taken in and around Lyon and in the departments of Haut-Rhin and Bas-Rhin in the east of the country. Pollution spikes were recorded in Grand Est, the Loire region, Brittany, New Aquitaine, Hauts-de-France, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes and Burgundy-Franche-Comté.
In Paris, the 34 degrees registered this Friday (38 are expected tomorrow) prompted the management of a central institute to close classes and send students home as classrooms were over 30 degrees.
Météo-France forecasts that temperatures will reach 40 or 42 degrees this Saturday around Bordeaux and Les Landes; 40 degrees on the Loire, Orléans and Paris and up to 39 degrees in Normandy. EFE
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