Heavy rain linked to ex-cyclone Kirk, which became a depression, arrived from the west of France during the night. They spread this Wednesday across the Loire" rel="tag">Pays de la Loire, Poitou, the Center then Île-de-France and as far as Champagne-Ardennes, Aisne and Lorraine.
At 8 p.m., Météo-France kept Seine-et-Marne on red alert and 29 other departments on orange alert. End of the orange “rain-flood” vigilance on Mayenne and end of the orange “wind” vigilance on the Pyrénées-Atlantiques and the Hautes-Pyrénées.
64,000 homes without electricity
At the start of the evening, Enedis announced that 64,000 customers were without electricity, mainly in the south of the country.
35,000 homes are without electricity in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, 8,000 in Landes, 7,500 in Ariège, 4,500 in Gers, 4,400 in Rhône, 2,100 in Loire and as many in Ain and 500 in the Hautes-Pyrénées.
Are placed in orange rain-flood alert : 21 departments from Vendée to Meuse via the Loire Valley and the Paris region, as well as the Alpes-Maritimes.
Are placed in raw orange vigilance the Meurthe-et-Moselle due to the flooding of the Chiers, Vendée and the Alpes-Maritimes.
Are in orange alert for strong winds : Isère, Loire, Rhône, Ain, Saône-et-Loire, Jura, Doubs and Haute-Saône. The territory of Belfort will join them at midnight.
Seine-et-Marne on red flood alert
Rare fact: Seine-et-Marne was placed at 4 p.m. red flood alert due to the flooding of the Grand Morin (downstream).
“Rain associated with depression Kirk affects a large part of the country this late afternoon. The most marked are currently located between Centre-Val-de-Loire, Ile-de-France, and the south of Picardy. They are ending in the west of Pays-de-Loire,” Météo France wrote at 6 p.m.
Between 5 a.m. and 5 p.m., 73 mm of precipitation fell in Nantes (Loire-Atlantique), 76 mm in Pornic (Loire-Atlantique), 79 mm in Noirmoutier (Vendée), with numerous floods as a result, and up to ‘at 54 mm in Le Mans (Sarthe) and 32 mm in Paris.
A gust of 211 km/h in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques
As for the wind, a gust of 211km/ha was recorded at altitude in the Pyrenean resort of Iraty. “During the afternoon and evening, from Dauphiné to Lyonnais to the Loire and Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, we expect gusts from south to southwest of 90 to 110 km/h, occurring in weakened regions by the heavy rains yesterday Tuesday,” warns Météo France.
Rail traffic interrupted in several areas
As a precaution, the SNCF had scheduled a total interruption of traffic on several routes this Wednesday, notably between Dax (Landes) and Tarbes (Hautes-Pyrénées), Bayonne and Hendaye (Pyrénées-Atlantiques) or even Saintes and Royan (Charente-Maritime) . Due to a landslide in the Loire, rail traffic between Saint-Étienne and Lyon was interrupted.
Kirk caused heavy damage in Portugal
First passing through the Iberian Peninsula, Kirk caused damage in Portugal, with 400 trees uprooted in the region of Porto, the large city in the north of the country. 300,000 people are without power. Storm Kirk continues the very wet trend of the year over most of mainland France. At the end of the rainiest month of September in 25 years, the average annual precipitation totals have already been exceeded almost everywhere in the country, in Nice, Saint-Nazaire, Strasbourg and even Le Mans and Paris.
Globally, September was marked by “extreme precipitation”, exacerbated by the planet’s abnormally warm temperatures for more than a year, a consequence of climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions from the humanity, according to the European Copernicus Observatory.
