Europe Scorches To All Time Record Highs; Toasty Here, Too, With An Interruption

People try to cool off in the Trocodero Fountain in Paris Friday.
Photo by Zakaria Abdelkafi/Getty Images

Here in Vermont, it got up to 90 degrees in Burlington, the first 90 degree reading of the summer.

Fun fact: Last summer, the first 90 of the year didn't hit until June 30, and we ended up with 17 days that were 90 or over. Normal for an entire summer is about five such days.

It's cooling off today in Vermont, temporarily at least. Plus, if you didn't like Friday's toasty temperatures, it was nothing compared to much of Europe

As you might have heard on the news, France suffered through its hottest day on record. From a climatology standpoint, the record highs were even more impressive than at first glance.

The temperature reached 114.6 degrees at Gallargues-le-Montueux, France Friday, breaking the all-time hot record for France of 111.4 set on August 12, 2003.

It's obviously very rare for a nation to break its hottest temperature. It's downright bizarre to break the previous record by three degrees. These new all time records are almost always broken by a fraction of a degree, or perhaps one degree at most.

On top of this, the hot record was set in June, before the normal hottest part of summer. If there's going to be an all-time record high, you'd expect it later in July or in August.

As the Category 6 blog points out, there's yet another amazing fact regarding the French hot record.  A full dozen weather stations beat or tied France's previous all time record high temperature.

The small principality of Andorra, which is between France and Spain, also established a new all time record high of 102.9 degrees.

If all this is unbelievable here's another factoid: France has a shot today of breaking its all time record high temperature that I just said was established yesterday.

It was so hot in Spain that a pile of manure got so hot it self-ignited, sparking a 10,000 acre wildfire. 

The heat in Europe will roll on through this weekend. It'll shift eastward a bit, so that Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic might establish all time record highs, too. The heat is finally expected to diminish early next week.

The Europe heat wave is part of a trend that's probably connected at least in part to climate change. National Geographic notes that Europe's five hottest summers in the past 500 years have all occurred within the last 15 years.

Heat waves in Europe are exceptionally deadly because the use of air conditioning isn't nearly as widespread as it is in the United States. Fewer than five percent of German and French homes have air conditioning.

At least 70,000 Europeans died in a long, punishing heat wave in 2003. About 56,000 Russians met a similar fate in an epic 2010 heat wave there.

U.S. HOT, BUT NOT AS BAD

Summer does seem to be getting its act together in the United States. A broad area in the northern and  central Plains,  which had experienced a cold and wet winter and spring, is now under a heat advisory. 

Heat indexes in this neck of the woods are over 100 degrees today and tomorrow.

Back home in Vermont, it will actually be a fair amount cooler than normal Sunday with lots of clouds and an unseasonable cold, upper level low overhead. But that will quickly clear out by Monday.

The entirety of next week in Vermont won't exactly have record heat like Europe, but it will be on the warm side, with increasing humidity toward the end ofthe week.

Stormy Weather, So Stormy Videos Naturally Pop Up

Storm damage around Dallas-Fort Worth yesterday.

As I've repeatedly mentioned in this here blog thingy, it's been awfully stormy and wet and sometimes dangerous in many parts of the nation this spring and early summer.

Things continued on pace like this through the past weekend. So of course there's videos.

The Dallas-Fort Worth area got hit by severe storms for the second Sunday in a row.  Possible tornadoes caused damage in and around Fort Worth.

In this video, people probably should not have been standing outdoors. This shows a wall cloud that eventually produced a tornado after this video was shot.  Scary seeing this come at you, huh?



Here's LOTS of hail in Colorado:



It's not just the United States. Check out this video from southern France as a motorist encounters an intensifying hailstorm. A crack appears in the windshield, then things get dramatically worse:



Back in the United States, tornados extended to as far as the East Coast.  Here's a twister last Thursday re-arranging a back yard and pool area in Mullica Hill, New Jersey.

It's Been Snowing A Lot In Other Places, Too. Plus Cool Train/Snow Vid

The Avoriaz Resort in the French Alps released
this photo after they were hit this week
with a huge snowstorm. Yes, it looks
like there's enough snow there to ski.  

I've been harping on the incessant snow and cold in New England, but of course there's always other parts of the world that manage to get into the snow act, too.

France, Sweden and parts of Canada have also been nailed. (You'll have to check out the video of the train at the bottom of this post.)

Jesse Farrell over at AccuWeather noted incredible snowfalls in the Pyrenees and French Alps over in Europe.

Farrell cited the Piau Engaly Ski Resort in the Pyrenees, which said it got 102 inches of snow -- eight and a half feet! - in one day and 157 over three days.

That one-day total would break the world record of 78 inches of snow in 24 hours. However, Farrell notes that ski resort measurements are usually not accepted into official weather records because personnel at the resorts haven't been trained to take measurements correctly.

The French Alps also reported some very heavy snows.

In Sweden, the city of Lulea, in the northern part of that country, had its snowiest day on record Tuesday, with 44.5 inches of new snow. That fell atop 30 inches already on the ground.

The Washington Post said people in that part of the world are accustomed to heavy winter weather, and the snow cleanup, while a lot of work, was done in a pretty short period of time.

I've mentioned several times that Maine has gotten blasted by this snowy pattern, which has dumped up to 76 inches of snow in nine days in the eastern part of the state.

Snowbanks keep growing in snowbound
Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada
Photo by Kate Letterick/CBC 

Or course, Canada's Maritime Provinces, particularly New Brunswick, have shared in this incredible snow blitz.

The mayor of St. John, New Brunswick declared a state of emergency earlier this week because that city has been smothered in snow, says the Globe and Mail of Canada.

There was 49 inches of snow on the ground in St. John by the time the third storm in a week ended on Tuesday. There's usually something like six or seven inches of snow on the ground in St. John this time of year, the Globe and Mail says.

Moncton, New Brunswick has already gotten about 80 inches of snow this winter, roughly the amount they get an entire winter.  Snow can fall as late as April, and in some years, May in Moncton, so they have a long way to go.

As I noted, a trainspotter in Salisbury,  New Brunswick got an awesome video up on YouTube that shows a Canadian National Railway locomotive blustering its way through the deep snow this week somewhere in New Brunswick.

Check it out. The first minute or so of the video is the best: