France records its hottest day as Utah calls a fire a state emergency

France recorded its hottest day after 44.3 degrees Celsius in Pissos, in Nouvelle-Aquitaine, according to Meteo-France. Sports minister Marina Ferrari said at least 40 people drowned in unsupervised swimming during the heat wave over a weekend. A Spanish monitoring system later estimated the heat contributed to 212 deaths between Sunday and Wednesday, and Spain recorded its highest average June temperatures since at least 1950.

Britain recorded a provisional June high of 36.7 degrees in Somerset and then 37.3 degrees in Santon Downham, Suffolk. Switzerland recorded 38 degrees in Basel, its hottest June temperature. Wildfires in Derbyshire burned about 22 hectares on the High Peak moor.

In Utah the Cottonwood Fire burned more than 59,000 acres near Eagle Point Resort in Beaver. Governor Spencer Cox called it the most destructive fire in the state's history and then declared a state of emergency for the fires. A wildfire in Garfield County, Colorado, burned more than 350 acres, destroyed a home, and prompted evacuations.

Swiss utility Axpo suspended the Beznau nuclear plant in Dottingen after the Aare river, used for cooling, reached 25 degrees Celsius. The shutdown was a heat constraint on a reactor, not a radiation incident. It tied the European heat wave to an energy plant.

The same hot days sat beside Venezuela's earthquakes, which were a geological disaster rather than a heat event. France's 44.3 degree reading and the drownings were the heat toll in one country. Utah's acreage was the fire toll in another.

No single global death total for the heat was published in these days beyond the Spanish estimate of 212 and France's report of at least 40 drownings. Britain and Switzerland contributed temperature records. The Beznau pause showed rivers warm enough to stop a plant from using them for cooling.