At the highest refuge in the Alps, temperatures in June came close to 10 degrees. The Arpa Piemonte weather station had never recorded anything like it.
10 degrees above zero. This is the temperature record reached on 29 June at the Capanna Margherita, the highest refuge in Europe at 4,554 metres on the Punta Gnifetti in the Monte Rosa massif. The intense heat has reached the very heart of the Alps, on the summits that were once known as the "eternal snows". This is an extreme value, given that the permanent snowfields are accustomed to sub-zero temperatures. Yet on 29 June, at eight in the evening, the Arpa Piemonte weather station at the Capanna Margherita recorded 9.7 degrees Celsius.
Making the situation worse is the fact that, in the days that followed and throughout the week, temperatures repeatedly remained above zero for the entire day, with lows of just -0.5 degrees. Experts describe a temperature more than 10 degrees above the averages expected at this time of year. Since 2002 — the year the weather station became operational — nothing like this had ever happened, not even in the summer of 2003 or during the major heatwaves of 2005, 2012 and 2015. Nor can it be dismissed as an isolated case: at the Col Major too, at 4,750 metres, just below the summit of Mont Blanc, thermometers rose to 9.3 degrees Celsius.
Just in recent days, on the Punta Helbronner, at an altitude of 3,466 metres, several mountaineers had reported the formation of a so-called ephemeral lake: the body of water had formed as a result of the high temperatures in the preceding days, which in the area had reached as much as 15 degrees above zero.
