Temperatures keep rising.
It will not be less than 30 degrees today in France.
And the night has already been very hot in France.
It is already 20 degrees at 7 a.m. in Paris, 22 in Toulouse, 23 in Lyon Bordeaux, 24 in Nantes, Marseille and Montpellier.
In the afternoon, it will be 41 in the shade in Toulouse, 40 in Bordeaux and Nantes, 34 in Lille and 36 in Paris.
From Friday, 40°C will be frequently reached or even exceeded over a large south-west quarter, according to Météo-France.
Thirty-seven departments, or a third of the country, in red or orange vigilance and 18 million people concerned: the heat wave of unprecedented precocity is growing in France.
Red vigilance, the highest level of the "national heat wave plan", will begin this Friday from 2 p.m. in 12 departments located in the south-west and the Atlantic coast: Charente, Charente-Maritime, Haute-Garonne, Gers, Gironde, Landes, Lot-et-Garonne, Deux-Sèvres, Tarn, Tarn-et-Garonne, Vendée and Vienne.
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Météo-France has also extended orange vigilance to a total of 25 departments, from Aude in the south of the country, to the center and Morbihan in the northwest.
In Saint-Jean-de-Minervois, in Hérault, the thermometer climbed to 40°C on Thursday: a record for earliness for mainland France excluding Corsica, according to Météo-France.
And the mercury will continue to climb until Saturday, with maximum temperatures between "40 to 42°C from the Landes to Poitou-Charentes, 38 to 40°C from the South-West to the Massif Central and the Center", specified the same source.
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"This is the earliest heat wave ever recorded in France" since 1947, says Matthieu Sorel, climatologist at Météo-France.
“Many monthly or even absolute records (…) should be broken in several regions”, he said, seeing it as a “marker of climate change”.
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The Ministry of Health has activated a free Canicule info service number (0 800 06 66 66) to answer questions and give advice, and the Ministry of Education has announced that schoolchildren and college students from the 12 departments in red will be able to stay home on Friday.