A violent episode of hail fell in Île-de-France, and more particularly in Seine-Saint-Denis, on Wednesday May 1 as virulent storms passed through. In Tremblay-en-France, several centimeters of hailstones accumulated on the sidewalks and roads.
Hailstones sometimes as big as pétanque balls. This Wednesday, May 1, a major storm hit Île-de-France late in the evening and during the night and the town of Tremblay-en-France paid the price.
On the sidewalks of this town of Seine-Saint-Denis, piles of several tens of centimeters of hailstones are still visible the day after the storms.
“It started with rain, normally around 9 p.m.,” says Marc, a local resident. “It quickly degenerated into hailstones as big as children’s marbles, for about two hours.”
“The floors were covered”
Result: the night was very restless for the residents. “It stopped traffic, the buses were blocked as if it were snow, they could neither move forward nor backward. It was quite impressive,” notes Marc.
“It was quite complicated, we were really impressed, because it happened suddenly,” says Valérie, who works in the town. “The floors were covered with hailstones, it was magnificent for me but for others it would surely be catastrophic.”
This is the first time that some residents have seen the streets of the city center flooded. “It overflowed,” assures Stéphane, postman in Tremblay-en-France.
“There was a storm, it was the end of the world here,” he continues. “There was lightning, it lasted a long time. It seemed like there was lightning every two or three seconds.”
A “storm supercell”
Marc estimates that during the night, up to 40 centimeters of hail accumulated. Since five o’clock in the morning this Thursday, this resident has now been at work trying to clear the hailstones, which do not seem to be melting.
Indeed, with such quantities and hailstones whose diameter exceeds four or five centimeters, twelve hours later the hail carpet persists, particularly in the Vieux-Pays district of Tremblay.
A few kilometers further, at Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulles airport, several flights were diverted Wednesday evening as the “stormy supercell” passed. In particular, water seeped into the terminal.
