The heat wave that killed 70,000 people in Europe 17 years ago

Arab Weather - Europeans remember well the summer of 2003, or the so-called Black Summer, when they lost thousands of their relatives and loved ones and their acquaintances, not because of a virus or pandemic, but because of a record heat wave that hit the continent and lost 70,000 people their lives within two weeks, and France's share was Of the catastrophe is the largest, with more than 14,000 people losing their lives within two weeks.

Two weeks of intense heat on a daily basis, day and night, exhausted the inhabitants of the cold continent, and even depleted the lakes and rivers, and their levels declined and many of them became unmanageable to ships, and what made the mud worse is the fires, as they destroyed thousands of hectares of forests and farmland and killed what they killed The animals destroyed the crops they had, and further raised the temperatures and made things worse.

Weather information and strange facts!

More than 16,000 deaths in France and Portugal alone

Many people may be surprised if we say that the fatal temperatures were only around 40 degrees Celsius, the maximum of which was recorded in Seville, Spain, 45.6 degrees Celsius, while France, with the heaviest outcome, had the highest temperature in which it was 41 degrees Celsius recorded in the city of Oksar in central France, but the deadly element The high humidity that accompanied the heat wave was due to the nature of the grasslands, the spreading lakes, the trees and the rivers, where the perceived temperature that the body sensed became close to 60 degrees Celsius with no wind, the weather became similar to an oven.

Portugal lost more than 4,300 people, most of them elderly and weakened physique, followed by Luxembourg, the small country in Western Europe, with 3000 victims, then the Netherlands with 2,500 victims, and the rest of the numbers were distributed to Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, Britain, Ireland. Denmark, Sweden, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Slovenia

Switzerland loses 2,000 people because of melting alpine ice

The heat wave hit hard the Alps, melting millions of tons of ice in a record time, and overflowing valleys and rivers around the Alps, sweeping with it the homes of residents and killing hundreds of people like those who died due to the heat wave.

Britain establishes heat early warning system due to heat wave 2003

Britain lost more than 2000 people during the 2003 heat wave, forcing the British government to set up an early warning system for heat to avoid any other catastrophe that might be caused by a large heat rise in the future,

How did the heat wave happen?

The heat wave was caused by an eruption of the hot African air mass from the Sahara Desert towards Europe, in conjunction with the presence of an air mass in the high air layers that increased its intensity and temperature, and this hot air mass was accompanied by the blowing of southern winds that led to a significant increase in temperatures on the northern slopes of the Alps and the mountains The Pyrenees on the French-Spanish border.

With no air depressions moving east from the Atlantic Ocean towards Europe, as it usually happens, there was no weather factor that could push the heat wave away from Europe, so it remained for two full weeks before its intensity subsided in mid-August 2003, and temperatures decreased and returned to their normal rates.

Record numbers for weather, temperatures, snowfall and rain