Name an August 2003 weather disaster that killed thousands. Most Americans would fish for an answer; ask a Frenchman (or woman) and they will think heat.
Summers in France, at least until then, were normally mild, with hot days sandwiched between cool nights that allowed some relief. Building construction reflects this historic norm; homes tend to be made of stone, which reflects heat rather than absorbs it, and surrounded with trees whose shade adds an extra buffer. This keeps homes cool, and as a result most do not have air conditioning.
Weather over most of Europe is the result of interaction between the clockwise rotation of the Azores High and the counterclockwise rotation of the Icelandic Low*. During the summer the Low weakens and splits in two, with one area centered between Greenland and Canada and the other along the west shores of Iceland, while the High shifts west from the Azores to Bermuda. This creates an oscillating wave of air (known as the The North Atlantic Oscillation) that brings alternating masses of warm, dry and cooler, wetter air to Western Europe between May and September. But in 2003, the Azores High got frisky and moved north towards Scandinavia. This blocked cool air from moving south and led to higher surface temperatures in the Mediterranean. In early August a high pressure system moved north from Africa and stalled over France; the clockwise rotation pumped this excess surface heat northward. Roadway surfaces melted and rail lines bucked; river levels fell, exposing Army tanks and munitions that had been submerged since World War 2; the heat even forced two nuclear plants in Germany to close when access to river water needed for cooling became unreliable. The human toll was no less dramatic: a combination of the heat, building construction, and social factors resulted in the deaths of over 20,000 persons across the EU, 14,000 of them in France.
And now, twelve years later, a similar slow-moving high was inching north from the Sahara.
Following the 2003 heat wave, the World Meteorological Organization (The UN World Health Organization’s weather office) urged countries to develop heatwave emergency plans. Once home, we switched on the radio (okay, France 24 through an IPad) and learned this infrastructure had been activated. Warnings were pronounced at regular intervals, it was announced cooling stations were opened (and their locations provided), families and friends were encouraged to look in on the less mobile, and train and bus schedules were curtailed (to avoid disruptions due to encounters with damaged surfaces). The night before, it was reported, over a million customers had lost power as a result of fires (blamed on malfunctions due to load) at the stations serving them, and today was expected to reach record highs. Out here in the countryside, farmers (ever attuned to the weather around them) had already shifted their work from mid-day to early morning and evening hours. Animals hunkered in the shade, and humans made sure windows were shuttered to prevent direct sunlight from reaching interior rooms.
We took our noon meal (smoked trout and fromage with greens, we had given up on the stove days ago) on the veranda. The trees around us were heavy with heat, branches and leaves drooping. The plants that bordered the lawn seemed in retreat, huddled; flowers closed, stems loose, doing their best to escape the stress of the sun. Or at least that’s what I imagined; it was exhaustingly hot to me, but I’d been living in an oceanic climate for the last 10 years, with one summer that barely touched the eighties, what did I know about hot at this point?
Just then, just when I was wondering whether it was all in my head, a magpie alighted upon a walnut tree by the road, opened its beak wide, and started to pant. Yup, it was a scorcher.
You know what happens next: it was time for my nap.
More soon!
* Graphic of the Azores High and Icelandic Low (in the ‘Storm tracks and the NAO section) http://www.air-worldwide.com/Publications/AIR-Currents/2012/A-Windy-Winter-Season/
Hippy Dippy Weatherman on a similar phenomena: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2HpB5CGfLQ