Heatwave: First heatwave of 2025, western France on orange alert

With temperatures above 35°C, France is experiencing its first heatwave of 2025 on Friday, June 20, according to Météo France, which has placed 16 departments, mostly located in the West, on orange heatwave alert, ahead of a peak expected across the entire country on Saturday.

Blazing sun, persistent sweltering heat and unusually warm nights... From Brittany to Poitou-Charentes via the Loire Valley and southern Occitanie, the thermometer is expected to reach 36°C to 38°C on Friday afternoon, around ten degrees higher than seasonal norms, the meteorological institute points out.

Fourteen departments in the West, from Manche to Charente-Maritime and from Morbihan to Indre-et-Loire, have been placed on orange heatwave alert ("be very vigilant") from Friday midday, as well as the Rhône and Isère in the Centre-East.

Around thirty other departments are on yellow alert ("be careful") and two are on orange alert for forest fires (Aude and Bouches-du-Rhône). Across France, schools, retirement homes, communities, and businesses are having to adapt.

Production reductions are possible in the nuclear fleet, particularly at the Bugey power plant site (Ain), due to the high temperatures of the Rhône, which cools the facility, EDF warned on Thursday.

In Niort (Deux-Sèvres), the urban garbage collectors, in conflict with their superiors over the wearing of shorts in the summer, deemed by management to be inconsistent with safety regulations, were exceptionally allowed to wear them on Friday and Monday, according to the CGT union. "When the sun is beating down like this, you have to wear a cap, it's mandatory. So the comfort of shorts is not negligible," declared Mickaël Billy, a union representative.

In Pau, collection rounds usually carried out in the afternoon have been shifted to the evening or early night; Angoulême has adapted the hours of its recycling centers.

And in Bordeaux, schools have cancelled or adapted their field trips, while the prefecture has called for vigilance among the tens of thousands of participants in "Bordeaux celebrates wine" , an event organised on the city's quays from Thursday to Sunday.

This heat is caused by the blocking of a high-pressure system over France. A high-altitude depression over the Atlantic will bring up warm air masses present over the Iberian Peninsula.

After a very mild night, a heatwave will hit a large part of the west on Saturday, with temperatures ranging from 35 to 38°C, reaching 39°C locally from the Loire Valley to Occitanie. On this day of the Fête de la Musique, the intense heat will extend north of the Loire to the Paris Basin and eastwards, as well as across the Channel in England.

A cooling on the western facade is expected from Sunday.

"This heatwave is remarkable for its precocity, but also for its intensity, especially for the western regions, since it began on June 19, before the summer solstice," analyzes Tristan Hamm, forecaster at Météo France. This is the 50th heatwave recorded by the public establishment since 1947, and one of the earliest.