24 June 2019

Memories of the 2003 canicule

The weather we're predicted to have this week reminds me of our arrival in Saint-Aignan in 2003. Sixteen years ago, we flew into Paris from the U.S. on June 2 and spent five days in Rouen in Normandy. On June 7, we drove down to Saint-Aignan in our rented car to start cleaning our new house and yard. The place was a mess, and the grass in the yard was more than knee-high because the previous owner had canceled her gardening service when we became the new owners in late April. Having tall grass to deal with was not something we had thought about. It was really too hot to be doing the work of dealing with thoroughly cleaning the house and at the same time getting the yard under control.


Predicted temperatures in Saint-Aignan for the next two weeks — in ºC above, in ºF below.
Notice that I've added a temperature conversion table in the sidebar on the right.


So that June the weather was already extremely and abnormally hot in northern France. We had had outdoor lunches in Rouen and in Étretat up on the English channel. That's almost unheard of in damp, drizzly Normandy. We were wearing shorts and T-shirts. It was hot in Saint-Aignan too, and was going to get even hotter. We didn't expect that. All through June and July, we suffered from the heat. Remember, we had spent many years living through chilly, gray San Francisco "summers" before moving to France. (Mark Twain famously wrote that the coldest winter he had ever experienced was a month of August in San Francisco!)

Morning low temperatures in ºC recorded in France on Aug. 12, 2003.
Our low temperature this morning is about 19ºC — we would normally expect 12ºC.

This week's weather will be comparable to the weather we had in the first half of August 2003. The hottest day was August 12, with a high in Tours, for example, of 39.8ºC (103.8ºF). The low in Tours that day was 22.6ºC (72.7ºF). The weather station in the town of Romorantin, 20 miles east of us, recorded temperatures above 104ºF for six straight days around that time. Houses had time to heat up to uncomfortable levels, and mornings were much warmer than usual. Walt remembers that he actually suffered from the skin condition called "prickly heat" or "sweat rash" at the time. We had a rental car with no air-conditioning, and of course no AC in the house. On August 8, we bought and took possession of a little Peugeot 206 (we still have it) that did have good AC, so many days saw us put the dog in the car and go for long drives out in the countryside just to escape the unrelenting heat.

Afternoon high temperatures in France on August 12, 2003, during the canicule.
We'll see what today brings. Accuweather predicts 33ºC (91.4ºF).

Canicule means "dog days" — normally, canicules occur in July or August, so this one will be early and temperature records will fall. You can see from the charts I posted above that temperatures are predicted to be extraordinarily high by the end of the week. In August 2003, as many as 20,000 French people, mostly elderly, died from heat exhaustion and dehydration during the great heat wave. I'm now elderly, no matter how much I want to deny that reality, so I have to be careful. Drink lots of water, they say. Limit physical activity. Stay in the shade. And so on. We have a car with AC but still no in-house AC.

10 comments:

  1. We had just bought this place and came and stayed... we recorded 44 in full sun and 33 indoors [the house had already warmed up a lot by the time we arrived.
    Walking from outside into the house was like stepping into a 'fridge... you couldn't help but shiver!!

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    1. We wondered what we had signed up for when the weather was so hot that first summer we were here. My experience of France — Paris, Normandy, etc. — told me that it couldn't possibly be that hot here very often. We didn't need to rush out and buy air-conditioners. In fact, that summer there had been a run on electric fans and we couldn't buy one locally. It was miserable. However, September was very nice.

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  2. We've started closing up the sunny side of the house and all windows and doors when the temperature outside is higher than inside. In the late afternoon, spraying the house with the garden hose pulls some heat out.
    Oh, Toy Story 4 is coming out. That's one movie to see in air conditioned comfort.
    Unfortunately, we have to go down to the Basses Alpes for a funeral. That'll be two days out of Paris.

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    1. But you have to go out in the heat to spray the house. Oh well. So far it's not really too hot. We have new white shutters on the sunny side of the house, and they seem to be keeping the place cooler. It's hard for me to believe that I grew up in North Carolina without air-conditioning. I guess children are less bothered by the heat than old folks.

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  3. Those 101-102 numbers are eye catching. I hope you two are able to take it easy and stay cool. As you know, many places in CA built before the 80s have no a/c. Even in LA. People buy those portable free-standing units here. The net says you can get them for around $250...Meanwhile, we are in the mid 60s today and completely overcast. Seeing what you're up against, I'm not going to complain.

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    1. It felt pretty hot here today but our thermometers read just 86°F. Add 10 or 15 degrees F to that... au secours !

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  4. I'm hoping that your temp estimates prove to be too high and that the humidity stays low. Sounds as if the new shutters were a good investment.

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  5. I used to live in San Francisco .... I love the Mark Twain quote.

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  6. Replies
    1. The main difference is that French houses are not air-conditioned in general. Humidity is also a lot lower than in the southeastern U.S. Still, 97 is very hot. Météo France is predicting temperatures between 95 and 100 over the next few days.

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