Violent thunderstorms accompanied by hailstones and heavy rain hit Île-de-France on Wednesday evening before easing during the night, indicates Météo-France, which has lifted the orange “thunderstorms” and “rain” alert. flood” in all the departments concerned.
“The storms evacuated into the Channel, towards England. Some rain, now lighter, still persists a little in the departments bordering the Channel, but no longer justifying orange vigilance,” the meteorological agency indicated in its latest bulletin published Thursday. Calvados nevertheless remains on orange “flood” alert due to significant rises in water expected in the Touques basin.
Around ten planes diverted
Around forty flights to Paris airports had to be diverted on Wednesday evening, the facilities manager said on Thursday, which also suffered water infiltration. “At the height of the stormy periods, between 9:30 p.m. and 10:30 p.m., air navigation diverted flights which, for safety reasons, could not land,” said a spokesperson for Groupe ADP.
This concerned “around thirty flights” at Paris-Orly, south of the capital, and around ten at Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle, in the north-east of the Paris metropolitan area. The planes landed in Nantes, Lyon, Brussels and Liège in Belgium, among others, he explained.
For its part, the General Directorate of Civil Aviation emphasized that it had exceptionally extended the curfew at Orly from 11:30 p.m. to midnight, to allow aircraft still in flight to land. The situation is normal Thursday morning and the flight programs are proceeding as planned, according to ADP.
It fell locally “between 8:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. the equivalent of two weeks of rain in the month of May to the north and east of Paris”, according to the Météo Chaîne.
As reported by France Bleu, several episodes of hail affected Seine-et-Marne in particular, in the area of Pontault, Roissy-en-Brie, Ozoir and Tournan before reaching Seine-Saint-Denis. Hailstones the size of bullets fell in the town of Tremblay-en-France.
Vineyards affected in Yonne
Violent hailstorms also fell on Wednesday evening in Chablis, in Yonne, an internationally renowned vineyard, and caused “very significant” damage.
On Wednesday evening, the Chablis region was crossed by two “hail-producing supercells”, according to Météo-France, causing hailstones, sometimes as large as walnuts, to fall in places. “The damage is quite significant in certain villages,” specifies the vice-president of the Chablis Producers Association, Frédéric Gueguen.
“The hail chopped everything up. It devastated a good part of the entire vineyard”
“The shoots on the vines are still young and therefore fragile,” underlines this winegrower from Domaine Céline et Frédéric Gueguen, who did not yet have a precise idea of the possible impacts on his vines. “There won’t be a lot of Chablis this year,” says Arnaud Nahan, co-owner of Domaine du Chardonnay, in Chablis.
