Why Europe’s summer of reckoning has just begun

A dense, yellow-orange pall hung over Bordeaux on Sunday, blotting out the sun and blurring the spires of the cathedral in this French city. A swirl of tiny ash particles stung eyes and stuck in throats. Twenty miles west of town, a mammoth forest fire burned so ferociously that it generated its own weather system.“We’ve never seen anything like it,” said Roger Peuron, 89, a retired engineer born before World War II who was driven out of his home by the approaching flames. He could have been speaking for millions of people across Europe.Ravenous fires. Searing heat waves. Freakish storms. The summer of 2026 has already shattered meteorological records in several European countries. On a continent that has weathered centuries of upheaval — ruinous wars, deadly pandemics — it is the weather