People filled their water bottles and sunbathed on the banks of the River Seine on Wednesday (July 13) as Paris sweltered in a heatwave that weather service Meteo France has projected to be one of France’s most intense, Reuters reports.
Temperatures soared up to 36 degrees Celsius in the French capital on Wednesday. Elsewhere in France, Meteo France has put seven departments in high alert for extreme heat.
"We have to stay in the shade, we have to protect ourselves," Parisian Nicephore Obama said as he basked in the sun in a beach chair on the riverbank. "When it gets hot, we take the water bottle, fill it up and freshen up.”
The scorching episode could be one of the hottest on record in France, according to Meteo France, with temperatures expected to rise up to 40 degrees Celsius in some parts of France by early next week.
Meteo France forecaster Francois Jobard said the heatwave would last eight to 10 days at least, with a possibility to persist until late July.
"Since the 2010s, we have a recurrence of heatwaves and an acceleration that is undeniable. We have almost one to three heatwaves per year, while in the 1970s and 1980s, it’s once every 10 years,” Jobard said.
But for some, like Australian tourist James Starrett, the sweltering heat is a nice surprise.
"It’s nothing you come over to Europe for, the heat. You usually come over to get away from it," he said. "We come from Canada for the past two years, the summer there is not that nice, so when we come over here, it’s amazing.”
