Uorange thunderstorm vigilance is underway in 17 departments due to a new salvo of violent thunderstorms which began Monday evening in the south-west of the country, before reaching the Centre-Val de Loire and the Pyrenees on Tuesday. These storms were accompanied by violent phenomena, in particular hailstorms, intense precipitation, violent gusts. Orange heat wave vigilance is maintained in 6 departments of the Center-East, including 2 which are also part of the departments on storm alert. The Isère is kept on alert only for heat waves.
Thousands of homes were still without electricity late Tuesday afternoon in the south-west, placed on orange storm vigilance, with restrictions in Gironde and Charente for the Fête de la Musique. At 4 p.m., 5,000 customers in Gironde and 4,000 in Dordogne were still cut off from the electricity grid, according to Enedis, after the violent hailstorms and gusts of wind which hit Monday evening the north of the Gironde, the two Charentes, the Dordogne and part of Béarn.
In Gironde and Charente, the music festival will be banned after 10 p.m. outdoors, the prefectures have announced. The party was completely canceled in Saint-Médard-en-Jalles, near Bordeaux, and in Oloron-Saint-Marie, in Béarn. In Dordogne and Haute-Vienne, the authorities ask “not to underestimate the weather” and recommend “the greatest vigilance” during the festivities, without prohibiting them.
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Heavy damage in Gironde
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 Gironde, the 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, according to a press release.
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”.
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, AFP noted.
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