SALT LAKE CITY — Europe is experiencing a pretty intense heat wave right now, and a map of a recent forecast went viral on social media for looking like a screaming skull.
The heat wave is racing across multiple countries, including France, Spain and Switzerland, according to BBC News. Similarly, countries like Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic recorded their highest temperatures for June so far.
Experts told BBC News that extreme temperatures in northern Africa led to the heat wave in Europe.
And it won’t be slowing down. Meteorologists told BBC News that the temperatures will continue to climb throughout the week.
A heat map of France has been making the rounds on social media because it looks like a deadly skull, according to Business Insider.
The forecast map, which was specifically for Thursday's temperatures, shows the heat map for the recent wave of high temperatures.
French meteorologist Ruben Hallalishared the photo on Twitter next to a picture of “The Scream” painting by Edvard Munch, which prompted a big social media reaction.
The map was created by French website Meteociel, which creates various weather visualizations, Business Insider reports.
Sylvain Dupont, a spokesperson for Meteociel, told CNN that the image wasn’t created that way on purpose and that the skull image appeared there by chance.
"By chance, it just happened to be possible to imagine a special form of a skull in this map," he said, emphasizing the randomness of the apparition. "There are so many maps created on our site for each updated forecast that it is statistically possible for some to look like something."
Still: Dupont said the photo is “remarkable” since it shows such high temperatures across all of France, which isn’t usually the case during this time of year. The map shows a high number of canicules — which “can be distinguished from ordinary heatwaves by their unrelenting intensity, with sweltering nights as well as days,” CNN reports — that don’t normally appear until mid-summer.