canicule

"We don't have summers any more without a canicule," she says.

It also has a heat alert system, or “plan canicule,” that successive governments have activated every summer since 2003.

However, downtown at the Vieux Port, the bars and brasseries were busy, partly because of the heat wave — “la canicule” — that roasted France this summer.

The canicule set in, as the French term a heat wave, and the temperature at kickoff was 89 degrees at Stade Auguste-Delaune.