Schools close in France as red heat alerts spread amid soaring temperatures

France is enduring a gruelling heatwave with temperatures soaring above 40C.

The national weather service, Meteo France, said that most of the country is entering what is described as a “plateau” of unrelenting heatwave conditions that is not forecast to start easing before Friday at the earliest.

Multiple towns in western and central France, including the major port of Saint-Nazaire on the Atlantic seaboard, with an overnight low of 23.2C, experienced their hottest night ever, Meteo France said on Monday.

Paris baked through its hottest June night, not getting below 24.2C – half a degree hotter than the previous record from 2017. The weather service warned of even hotter nights.

“This will continue through the end of the week, with heat levels never before recorded across more than three-quarters of the country on Wednesday and Thursday,” it said.

In a country without widespread air-conditioning, people, businesses and services tried to adapt as best they could. Hundreds of schools were closed on Monday and many hundreds more were cancelling some classes, the education minister said.

Broadcasts on the Paris transport network urged commuters to hydrate. Medical specialists took to the airwaves to warn of the potentially deadly cocktail of drinking alcohol in extreme heat. Authorities cracked down on alcohol consumption in public.

Multiple drownings were reported as people sought relief in rivers, despite warnings about currents and other dangers.

Human-caused climate change is tied to increasing extreme weather, and UN climate agency projections say the next five years should shatter more heat records.

A growing swathe of France, spreading on Monday to more than half of its regions, was under a “red alert” for heat, with larger areas forecast to suffer highs of above 40C and nights not dropping below 20C.

Over the last four years, more than 200,000 people across Europe died from heat-related causes, and most of the fatalities were preventable, the World Health Organisation’s Europe office said this month.

More above-average temperatures are expected this summer, which can cause heat exhaustion and life-threatening heat stroke.