Météo France updated its vigilance map at 10 p.m. on Tuesday by placing 25 departments on storm and/or heat wave alert.
The departments in orange alert to thunderstorms are: Doubs, Deux-Sèvres, Vienne, Charente-Maritime, Charente, Gironde, Landes, Haute-Vienne, Dordogne, Creuse, Cantal, Lozère, Aveyron, Tarn , Haute-Garonne, Ariège, Puy-de-Dôme, Allier and Haute-Loire.
The departments concerned by double vigilance, storms and heat waveare: the Loire, the Rhône, the Ain, the Jura and the Saône-et-Loire
The Isère is only placed on the alert heat wave.
Storms in these departments will be accompanied by violent phenomena. At 3 p.m., they were triggered on the Allier, the Rhône as well as on the Loire, where hail is observed, indicates Météo France. A temperature of 34 degrees was recorded in Lyon-Bron at the start of the afternoon as well as in Macon.
In Gironde and in Charente, the music festival will be prohibited after 10 p.m. outdoors. The party was completely canceled in Saint-Médard-en-Jalles, near Bordeaux, and in Oloron-Saint-Marie, in Béarn. In Dordogne and Haute-Viennethe authorities ask “not to underestimate the weather” and recommend “the greatest vigilance” during the festivities, without prohibiting them.
Severe thunderstorms Monday evening
The climatic episode damaged roofs and vehicles on Monday evening, caused flooding of buildings, falling trees and cables on roads and railways, causing more than 2,000 firefighters to intervene in the region, but no casualties in deplore.
In Girondethe damage to crops and vines is “localized” but “catastrophic”, the Chamber of Agriculture said on Tuesday, “corn, vines, field vegetables: no production seems to have been spared” in the north- Gironde.
Météo-France, which recorded 55 mm of rain in Clion (Charente-Maritime) and 41 mm in Angoulême and measured gusts of one hundred to 112 km / h in Cognac (Charente) and 106 km / h in Bordeaux-Mérignac, has indicated that the “large hail” which fell on Monday evening was “more than 7 cm in diameter in places”.
Hail the size of golf balls
On Monday, firefighters intervened 862 times in the north of the Gironde and in the agglomeration of Bordeaux, where hailstones the size of golf balls fell. The mayor of Taillan-Médoc (10,000 inhabitants), Agnès Versepuy, estimated on France Bleu Gironde that “80%” of the houses were “affected”. “Roofs are broken, ceilings have collapsed, there are uninhabitable houses,” she said.
Not far away, in Eysines, an Ehpad was partly flooded and 22 residents displaced overnight, while on the Atlantic coast, in Carcans, 126 children and 28 teachers from a UCPA holiday camp had to be brought to safety in a gymnasium. Two children were slightly injured.
Significant damage in the vineyards
According to the prefecture, the damage in the vineyard “seems significant”. In particular in the Médoc and Blayais, specified the interprofession of Bordeaux wines. The regional councilor delegated to viticulture Lydia Géraud estimated from “5,000 to 10,000” the number of hectares of vines affected by hail.
In Charente also, the vineyards in the Cognac region, and agricultural plots, were affected. “It’s the first time that it’s broken like that,” told an AFP correspondent Nicolas Roussillon, a farmer whose crops extend from Bonnes, in the south of the department, to the Dordogne. “Even a crusher would not have done better”, notes this cereal farmer, after having lost “100% of his wheat” in the storm, as well as all of his corn and sorghum, chopped by hailstones.
In Dordogneseveral primary schools have been closed in the La Roche-Chalais, Vanxains and Saint-Aulaye and Ribérac sectors.
Another stormy system affected the Bearn sector of Pyrenees-Atlantiques by causing “a lot of damage”, on houses and vehicles, according to the prefecture.