At 4:00 pm yesterday the temperature was 106ºF (42ºC) in the shade.
What people in France who are averse to air conditioning tell you is “you can manage the heat by working with your house.” Open the windows (and doors) at night to create a cross draft and let the house cool down, they instruct, then close the windows and secure the shutters once the sun hits your house mid-morning. If that doesn’t work, you need to add more insulation and make your house more energy efficient. You can walk through a village, like Castelnau-de-Montmiral in the featured image, at and after lunch and all of the shutters will be closed. For a visitor this can be disconcerting. But on a hot day it is totally normal. In general, shutters open again late afternoon as the air cools, and plants may even reappear on windowsills. Most of the activity is still before 10am though, both outside and in the stores.
This method works pretty well for normal summer temperatures that hit the mid-80s and low 90s F (30-34ºC) in the afternoon with nights cooling a good 20ºF, especially up here on the plateau when sunset often delivers a cooling breeze. It works even during the hottest weather and heatwaves where the night doesn’t get cooler (“Canicules”) in the Jacobsohn “old house” and “west wing” because the back of the houses are buried 4 feet into the ground and almost totally protected from the sun by the garden wall. The upstairs can get toasty, but the kitchens remain a dream, especially the one in what is known as the “west wing” (downstairs from the new floor project), which only has windows on one side. We visited friends in a similarly partially subterranean old stone house when the outside temperature was 95ºF (35ºC) and with the shutters all closed, the downstairs was cooler than ours with the a/c running.
These heat-efficient details are the kind of thing that convince many French people that they don’t need air conditioning. Sources (including National Public Radio) report that only 25% of French houses had a/c in 2025 in contrast to the 90% in the US. In fact the percentage is nuanced by region, with The Guardian Weekly (Vol 215 #3) noting that in the southern provinces 48% of houses boast a/c with only 10% in the north where it is (usually) cooler. But that is still less than half. Resisters call it a wasteful luxury; others call it a necessity, especially as global and especially European temperatures continue to rise. Then there is politics, with National Rally (Marine La Pen’s party) making a/c a focus. Given our US citizenship, it should be no surprise that we fall enthusiastically into the pro-a/c group. Meanwhile, our cousin in Paris with whom we had intended to stay with this week does not have a/c. He advised us to stay home. His family, like so many families, leaves Paris in mid-July and stays away until the end of August, usually missing most, if not all ,of the hottest weather. This early heatwave puts additional stress on Parisians like his family who are not used to being there when it is this hot. But it isn’t just France, as this map shows. My brother is posting pictures of temperatures only a few degrees below ours in southern England.
Residents of South West France might expect this in a canicule in August (when the overnight temperatures do not fall more than a few degrees), but we are as surprised as anyone else to see it in June, which normally has lovely weather. That said, we are prepared. Unlike family and friends in Paris and the UK, we have the same heating/cooling system that Walter and Yvon put in for Andrée almost a decade ago, known as a “splitter” or heat exchange. What look like typical air conditioning compressors outside the house deliver cooled air in summer and heated air in the winter. We only have two inside units, one in our bedroom and one on the staircase, but they work, supplemented by the stove in winter and a couple of fans in summer. I am so grateful for that decision, made when we realized the furnace was on its last legs and we wanted a cheaper substitute!
It may be a luxury, but it lets us live our lives and do our work, and the heater part is definitely more environmentally friendly (as most French power is nuclear it does not add to greenhouse gas, either). We also installed one unit in each of the studios to make them more comfortable for guests and two each in the two houses (“Old” and “West”) across from Andrée’s house. The first summer we used the shutters/windows method, and Walter and Juan Carlos installed a beautiful wooden ceiling fan in the upstairs studio, it is a very high ceiling as you can see here, so this mostly works to blow hot air down in winter, but in summer it creates a very nice draft (and blows away any stray mosquitos), but the a/c is still much better on days like today. There is also a pellet stove in the upstairs studio, so along with the heat exchange, both are potentially off-season rentals — and a place for family and friends to stay whenever they wish to visit.
Cats
When it is really cold, any exposed skin actually hurts. Yesterday afternoon I stepped outside wearing a tank top and balloon pants and, for the first time, my exposed skin immediately hurt from the heat. I understand why people in hot countries cover as much of their skin as they can. It was so hot that “dead-eye,” the black and white barn cat that may have only one working eye, did not take flight as soon as he heard me coming around the corner into the patio but kept his spot in the deep shade under the hydrangea, albeit with caution. It tells you everything that he feared losing his shady spot more than he feared me!
Gato Gateau had no such qualms. She was never feral and is the undisputed queen of our informal colony. She claims the shaded stone shelf at the back of the patio until her body heat warms it up too much and then takes up a spot on the ground under a piece of furniture. They all make great use of their kitty water fountain (the one rejected by Mia) and I need to refill it every day. But as with all cats, the thing you discourage is the thing they do, so they also join the bees, wasps, and birds in drinking from the birdbath & solar fountain in front of the house.
Stay cool folks. It is supposed to break by the weekend with cooler day time temperatures . . . at least for a few days before the next one hits.