A boy cools off outside the Guggenheim Bilbao Museum in Spain's Basque Country on Tuesday as temperatures soared to 104 degrees Farenheit. Average highs for June in the Bilboa metro area are normally in the low 70s Fahrenheit. Photo by Miguel Tona/EPA
June 23 (UPI) -- Europe was bracing Tuesday for record-breaking June temperatures of more than 100 degrees Fahrenheit over the coming days with Red "threat to life" alerts issued for France, Spain and other western and central European countries. Parts of Britain are under similar warnings.
The French meteorological administration said the most severe level weather warning was in place for more than half of the country's 13 regions, with hundreds of schools shut after temperatures topped 107 degrees Fahrenheit in Bordeaux on Monday, breaking the previous record for the southwestern wine region set in August.
Poitiers, 140 miles northeast of Bordeaux, saw its hottest June day in almost eight decades.
At least 18 deaths have been blamed on the heatwave, including two children, two and four years old, who died in a parked car in Carpentras in the south of the country on Monday. The children were believed to have become trapped after climbing into the vehicle without their mother knowing.
