As summer ends, records fall

With heat wave after heat wave across Europe this summer, temperature records have fallen in numbers of places, and when the numbers are all in, it may be Europe's hottest summer since records have been kept.

Even normally cooler areas such as northern Scandinavia have not escaped the heat, with temperatures as high as 40°C in northern Norway.

For the Netherlands, the official meteorological agency, KNMI, has declared summer 2018, June through September, the hottest in the Netherlands in 300 years. There were two official heat waves, and the temperature stayed above 20 for 60 days in a row, accompanied by drought over long stretches of summer.