Coolness returns to the country. An orange alert for “thunderstorms” has been triggered for Saturday in 31 departments while a strong stormy episode will cross most of the country, indicates Météo France. The weather services have also placed 14 departments on orange “thunderstorm” alert for Sunday in the Grand-Est.
Saturday at 6 a.m., the departments of Tarn, Aveyron, Lot, Cantal, Allier and Ain went into orange “thunderstorm” alert for this Saturday afternoon. They thus joined the 25 departments that were already there: Charente, Charente-Maritime, Cher, Gironde, Landes, Deux-Sèvres, Vienne, and all the departments of Grand Est and Burgundy-Franche -County.
“The altitude depression at the origin of the stormy degradation is currently rising over Spain towards the Pyrenees,” Météo France said on Saturday morning. In Aquitaine, “frequent storms are present” accompanied by “strong electrical activity, locally heavy rain intensities sometimes of 20 to 30 mm/h” and “hail in places”. From the Massif Central to the northeast, the stormy episode has not yet started.
In the morning, these storms will extend to the Centre-Val de Loire, while from the Pays de Loire to Île-de-France, Champagne-Ardenne and Lorraine, cloudy periods may give locally stormy showers but more isolated. Morning temperatures will be between 8 and 13 degrees from Brittany to Belgium, from 15 to 20 degrees elsewhere, up to 21 to 22 degrees in Corsica.
More violent storms in the Grand Est
Likewise, from Occitanie to Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, the sky will be very cloudy and a few showers will be possible from the morning. But at the same time, a more marked stormy deterioration will approach the Pyrenees, and will quickly extend towards the Massif Central. In the afternoon, from the east of the Pyrenees to Limousin, then to Auvergne Rhône-Alpes, the storms will become strong and multiply, giving high intensities of rain, sometimes hail and powerful gusts of wind.
This area of storms will head towards the Centre-Val de Loire, the east of Île-de-France and Bourgogne-Franche-Comté at the end of the afternoon, to reach the Grand-Est in the evening, with continued heavy rain, violent gusts of wind and hail, particularly in the north-east of the country where these storms will be the most violent.
Only the regions from Brittany to Nord-Pas-de-Calais, as well as Corsica, will remain safe from this bad weather, and will keep a calmer but cloudy weather. The south-easterly wind will blow quite strongly until the beginning of the afternoon from Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur to the Massif Central.
