Weather forecast: record mildness between Christmas and New Year’s Day

TAnyone who ventured outside on Thursday, December 30 noticed it. That day, we broke monthly “heat” records, for example around the Mediterranean. The temperature has thus exceeded the mark of 20 ° C in Marseille. In the northern part of the country, the temperature was frequently 10 ° C above seasonal norms.

The day before, December 29, we had broken records for minimum temperatures, those that we see at the end of the night. In Nouvelle-Aquitaine, we recorded 13 ° C in Sabers, in the Landes, and 13.2 ° C in Saint-Emilion, in the Gironde. This Wednesday “was the mildest day observed in France past December 21 with a national average of 12.7 ° C”, indicates Météo France – the average is taken from the readings of thirty stations representative of the territories of the metropolis .

According to specialists, it is the whole week that separates Christmas from New Year’s Day – the truce for confectioners – which must be placed under the regime of the exception. Never before had such a jump in the thermometer been observed over the period. The previous record, dated 2002, was exceeded by 0.5 ° C. The other side of the coin is that some areas below the Alps or the Massif Central are seeing their rivers swell, as a result of rains and snowmelt.

An atmospheric river

The current situation is explained by an “atmospheric river” which carries hot and humid air across the Atlantic, from the Caribbean to western Europe passing south to the Azores. The mildness is amplified by a high pressure above Spain which traps heat in the lower layers of the atmosphere, near the ground. In recent days, the effect has been spectacular at the foot of the Pyrenees, to the delight of locals and tourists alike on the New Aquitaine coast.

The weather should remain generously sunny on New Year’s Day, before a slight cooling on Sunday 2. It will become more gloomy at the start of the week. It’s back to school.