SFGATE: Europe faces an early summer 'inferno'
Published on June 28, 2019 at 01:17AM by Luisa Beck, Rick Noack and William Booth, The Washington Post
BERLIN - An early summer heat wave across Europe is breaking monthly - and in some cities - all-time records, as the continent oven-bakes under dangerous temperatures soaring above 100 Fahrenheit, driven by hot winds from the Sahara.
On social media, Europeans are posting memes of sinners burning in hell. A heat map for France, tweeted by a university meteorologist, appeared next to the Edvard Munch painting "The Scream." A forecaster in Spain warned that an "inferno" was coming.
On the television news, the continent's weather reporters were standing in front of maps with swirling blobs of hot pink and blood red, illustrations of extreme heat.
Scientists in Europe are generally blaming human-induced climate change for such extreme weather events, while noting that no one warm spell can be blamed solely on the rise of greenhouse gases.
Photos of the jaguars swimming in the pool of the Zoo de Bordeaux-Pessac in southwestern France were trending. At the Mulhouse Zoo in northeastern France, the keepers were feeding the lemurs frozen raisin sorbet.
It's so hot in the Saxony region of Germany that officials are lowering the wide-open speed limits on the Autobahn as the roadways began to melt.
Blame the "Saharan Bubble" or the "Spanish Plume," its hot breath of Africa jetting into Europe, steered by a stagnant high-pressure zone responsible for the big Greenland melt event that has been breaking records for longevity. Scientists say extremes may be becoming more common in a warming world.
In Prague's city center, visitors and locals clustered around a sprinkler truck to cool down.
Final exams for students in France were delayed a week due to the heat wave, while French President Emmanuel Macron promised, "the whole government is mobilized."
In 2003, caught unprepared by a...
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