Europe swelters under deadly 'Omega' heatwave, more records broken

[mahatmakanejeeves]

5. To Escape Record Heat, the French Are Taking to Water. Both Have Been Deadly.

PARIS DISPATCH
To Escape Record Heat, the French Are Taking to Water. Both Have Been Deadly.

Crowds are filling the Canal Saint-Martin in Paris, as temperatures soar above 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Forty people drowned while swimming in other waterways.


Swimming in Canal St. Martin in Paris on Tuesday. Samuel Boivin/NurPhoto, via Getty Images

By Mark Landler and Ségolène Le Stradic
Reporting from Paris
June 25, 2026
Updated 4:17 a.m. ET

Perched on the cobblestone bank of the Canal Saint-Martin in Paris, watching his children whoop and shout as they splashed in the murky water, Stéphane Guillaume looked like a rare Parisian who’d beaten the heat. But in the new normal of scorching-hot Paris summers, he said, any victory would be fleeting.

“It’s going to get worse every year,” said Mr. Guillaume, a 44-year-old computer engineer. “It’s very worrying because we’re already at the limit of what’s bearable.”

With temperatures across France soaring to the highest levels ever recorded in June — more than 40 degrees Celsius, or 104 degrees Fahrenheit — thousands of people are turning to extreme measures: jumping into canals, rivers and other waterways for relief. It can be a deadly choice. Forty people have drowned in heat wave-related accidents between June 18 and June 23, according to the French government.

Many in France still recall the summer of 2003, when nearly 15,000 people in the country, most of them older, died in a freak heat wave. That prompted recurring debates about how to weatherproof French society. The Ecologists, a green party, is proposing paid time off for those most exposed to climate disruptions, while decades of cultural resistance to air conditioning seems finally to be on the wane.

{snip}


Swimmers jumping from a bridge into Canal Saint-Martin. The area has been packed with Parisians trying to cool off during the heat wave. Samuel Boivin/NurPhoto, via Getty Images

{snip}

Mark Landler is the Paris bureau chief of The Times, covering France, as well as American foreign policy in Europe and the Middle East. He has been a journalist for more than three decades.

Ségolène Le Stradic a reporter and researcher for The Times, based in Paris.