Well, it's been a strange old summer in France.

At the end of May and beginning of June large parts of central France were suffering catastrophic flooding. Some suburbs of Paris had water levels above anything in living memory. Not only Paris but a huge swathe of Europe from the Loire through Germany and central Europe all the way to Ukraine. So severe, there's a Wikipedia entry

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_European_floods

For vineyards across large parts of the Loire, Burgundy and Bordeaux this capped off a disastrous start to the year, with late frosts in April and hailstorms in may killing off up to 100% of the crop in some areas.

Would this continue into a washout summer? Hardly.

Since June the entire Centre-West of France has had a rainfall shortage ranging from severe to record breaking. In July and August combined Tours recorded 11mm, and many places in the West were under 15mm. For 2 months!

http://actualite.lachainemeteo.com/actualite-meteo/2016-09-01-18h20/la-secheresse-s-aggrave-en-france---toujours-pas-d-eau-en-vue...-31008.php

Multiple locations spent much of August hovering around the 33-37C mark. No record months like last year, but relentless steady heat.

Large parts of France are bright yellow at the moment. Here's the European drought observatory's latest soil moisture. Think Kent is dry this year? Well it's all relative. Go on to this site and select soil moisture / last daily

http://edo.jrc.ec.europa.eu/edov2/php/index.php?id=1111

And to put it into context, look at soil moisture / anomaly

Most of France, Switzerland, Spain, West Germany and North Italy (oh and the Carpathians) are in severe drought. Most of these areas are the same ones that were flooded in May. Again, for comparison look at the yellow grass regions of South East England. To go from saturated to dessicated soils in 3 months is quite something. Unprecedented?

Looks like it's been a dry one in Iceland too...