French towns sizzle as May shapes up to be hottest on record

PARIS • Several southern French towns sizzled in record high temperatures for May, while the month as a whole is on track to be the hottest since records began, the national weather service said.

Towns such as Albi, Toulouse and Montelimar in southern France set records of between 33.4 deg C and 33.9 deg C on Wednesday, while areas on the west and the northern coasts also logged unprecedented high temperatures, Meteo-France said.

The country has been in the grip of an extraordinary warm spell for this time of year, with the past 37 days in a row featuring temperatures above the average.

It is "highly probable" that May 2022 will be the hottest since records began, surpassing the previous high set in May 2011, Meteo-France said.

"It's a warm period, long-lasting, wide-reaching and intense, that is exceptional for this time of year," meteorologist Matthieu Sorel from Meteo-France told Agence France-Presse.

The warm spell did not meet the technical definition of a heatwave - when average nation-wide temperatures need to surpass 25.3 deg C for three consecutive days.

But it is causing major problems for farmers and sending warnings that it might affect France's wheat crop, which enters a crucial growth stage in May.

Wheat prices are at record levels globally, mostly due to the war in Ukraine, which was a major exporter of the cereal before Russia's attack began in February.

All heatwaves today bear the unmistakable and measurable fingerprint of global warming, a new academic report from experts in the World Weather Attribution consortium said last week.

Temperatures in India and Pakistan have hit records recently, while Spain has also issued warnings about extreme heat in some southern areas this week.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE