France has had a bad summer. First came the heatwaves, followed later by the respite of the World Cup amid cooler days. Then, in the midst of the finals, France lost badly, and the heat and wildfires returned.
France's powerful national team, les Bleus, was a genuine short-list contender to win this year's Fifa World Cup. But in the semi-finals, the French fell to Spain. And in the playoffs for third place, les Bleus were vanquished by England. Thus there's been a sour mood, now only replaced by the annual battle with forest fires and a rebounding heat wave reflecting the El Niño weather cycle.
The first heatwave in June was part of a wider Europe-wide scorcher where temperatures went from the usual hot 80s and 90s to the dangerously broiling numbers of 90s to low 100s. The heatwaves, or canicules, recalled the now record swelter of summer 2003, complete with the predictable forest fires in the south and the pine barren blazes in the southeast. The canicule caused as many as 15,000 deaths, mostly of older people.
