Keystone-SDA
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October 9, 2024 – 08:50
(Keystone-ATS) The Kirk depression which will sweep across France on Wednesday will cause “intense rain” from Vendée to Champagne-Ardenne and strong winds in the Pyrenees, alert Météo France, which placed 30 departments on orange alert in its latest bulletin.
Among these departments, 23 are placed on orange vigilance for “rain-flood”, four for “wind” (Pyrénées-Atlantiques, Hautes-Pyrénées, Loire and Rhône) and three for floods (Haute-Saône, Saône-et-Loire and Vosges), details the bulletin published Wednesday morning.
Météo-France has placed the Oise, Aisne and Mayenne on orange “rain-flood” vigilance, and the Loire and the Rhône on orange “strong wind” vigilance. The weather forecasting organization has revised upwards the cumulative rainfall in Ile-de-France.
“The accumulations over the entire day will be very significant”, in an axis going from Vendée to Champagne-Ardenne via the Paris region, specifies the organization. “These are quantities that usually fall within a month,” he adds.
In the Pays de la Loire, the first region affected by the center of the depression, between 60 and 80 mm, or even up to 90 mm of rain are locally expected during the day.
In Loire-Atlantique, the rains will increase in intensity during the day, reaching 10 to 15 mm in an hour, according to a press release from the prefecture. Also, “an increase in the level of vigilance” is not excluded “in the south of Pays de la Loire”, warns Météo-France.
The rains will gradually ease but “40 to 60 mm” are still expected in the Paris basin and in Champagne-Ardennes and “30 to 50 mm” near the Belgian border.
Stormy rain will also affect the Alpes-Maritimes in the evening. Currently on yellow alert, they could be placed on orange alert.
Flood risks
Météo-France warns of the risk of flooding, due to “already very wet soil”.
The Pyrénées-Atlantiques and Hautes-Pyrénées have also been placed on orange alert for “wind”, with gusts reaching “120 to 150 km/h on the summits and 100 to 110 km/h in the valleys and plains”.
Météo France now estimates that only 17 are the number of departments that will be on orange alert on Thursday, only for “rain-flooding”, and mainly in Ile-de-France and Lorraine.
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 hot 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.
