Even ice cream, Italian gelato or Popsicles couldn’t help this time.
Temperature records that had stood for decades or even just days fell minute by minute Thursday afternoon and Europeans and tourists alike jumped into fountains, lakes, rivers or the sea to escape a suffocating heat wave rising up from the Sahara.
On a day that no one on the continent will ever forget, two potential drug dealers in Belgium even called the police, begging to be rescued from the locked container they managed to get themselves trapped in.
It was nearly impossible to keep up with the falling records as temperatures climbed higher and higher under a brutal sun – in Paris and London, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands – all places where air conditioning is not typically installed in homes, cafes or stores.
Climate scientists warned these types of heat waves could become the new normal but they loom as a giant challenge for temperate Europe. As emissions keep warming the planet, scientists say there will be more and hotter heat waves, although it’s too early to know whether this specific hot spell is linked to man-made climate change.
“There is likely the DNA of climate change in the record-breaking heat that Europe and other parts of the world are experiencing. And it is unfortunately going to continue to worsen,” said Marshall Shepherd, professor of meteorology at University of Georgia.
Electric fans sold out across Paris – and traditional folding fans made a comeback on the city’s stuffy Metro. Trains were canceled in Britain and France, and authorities in both nations urged travelers to stay home.
France’s heat alert system went to its maximum level of red for the first time during last month’s heat wave, when France saw its highest-ever recorded temperature of nearly 115 degrees Fahrenheit. On Thursday, about one-fifth of French territory was under a red alert, stretching from the English Channel through the Paris region and down to Burgundy and affecting at least 20 million people.
French authorities have been particularly wary, since a 2003 heat wave killed nearly 15,000 people, many of them elderly people alone in stiflingly hot apartments.
“The science behind heat wave attribution is very robust – the first extreme weather event to be definitively linked to global warming was the 2003 European heat wave,” said NASA climate scientist Kate Marvel. “We know that as the climate warms, heat waves become more likely and more severe.”
So as tourists frolicked in fountains, authorities and volunteers in Paris and London fanned out to help the elderly, sick and homeless, opening centers for them to rest, cool down and shower.
“They are in the street all day, under the sun. No air conditioning, no way to protect oneself from the heat,” said Ruggero Gatti, an IT worker joining other Red Cross volunteers handing out water bottles, soup and yogurt to the homeless in the Paris suburb of Boulogne.
Across the Channel, the heat damaged overhead electric wires between London’s St. Pancras train station and Luton Airport, blocking all train lines. East Midlands Trains posted a message to passengers on Twitter, saying simply “DO NOT TRAVEL.”
The sheer levels of heat on Thursday afternoon were nothing short of astonishing:
■The Paris area hit 108.7 degrees Fahrenheit, beating the record of 104.7 set in 1947.
■The Netherlands’ meteorological institute announced a record that beat the previous record set just a day ago: 104.7 Thursday in the municipality of Gilze Rijen, near the border with Belgium.
■Belgium hit all-time records twice in the day, rising to 105.3 in the western town of Beitem. “This is the highest recorded temperature for Belgium in history since the beginning of the measurements in 1833,” said Alex Dewalque of the country’s Royal Meteorological Institute.
■The northern German town of Lingen set a new national temperature record at least three times Thursday afternoon, finally hitting 108.7. Those repeated records came after the country had set a national record Wednesday of 104.9 F in Geilenkirchen near the Belgian border.
■London recorded its hottest day on record for July, with the mercury climbing to 98.4 at Heathrow Airport. The previous July record was 98 in 2015. Britain’s temperature records go back to 1865.