The episode of intense rain which has hit the southern part of France since Friday subsided this Sunday. No longer is any department classified under orange vigilance: the last – Var, which remained on “flood” alert – was downgraded to yellow vigilance by Météo France. “The episode of the heaviest rains is over. But there are still significant stormy rains at times over eastern Corsica,” warned the meteorological institute.
“The day was relatively calm,” confirmed the Var firefighters who focused their actions this Sunday on pumping and cleaning, an activity which should take them another “one or two days”. In the Var, within an area located between Draguignan, Fréjus, Saint-Tropez and Luc, “we reached values of 300 to 350 millimeters of rain in two and a half days (this represents approximately 6 months of precipitation in Paris),” indicated Météo France.
A previous Cévennes episode last week
Since the start of the stormy episode which affected the Var on Friday evening, firefighters have intervened 340 times, including around a hundred security and sheltering actions, “mainly linked to the recklessness of people in cars which have entered a flood-prone road”. The most affected areas are located around the Argens plain, the Pays de Fayence and the Gulf of Saint-Tropez, a small port city popular with the jet-set.
Last week, Gard and Var had already been affected by heavy rains which affected a good part of the center-east of the country, causing exceptional flooding in Ardèche and the Rhône. These episodes are expected to be more frequent and intense under the effect of global warming.
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