Are Météo-France’s supercomputers just paper giants? This is the question we can ask ourselves after the deluge which fell on Marseille (no less than 80 mm in a few hours, or a month of September of precipitation) early in the morning on Tuesday October 8. These two super-powerful machines, supposed to have a capacity for anticipation “10 million times greater than their ancestor put in place 30 years ago” did not, in fact, see much of it coming.
Worse: the Alpes-Maritimes were placed on orange alert while Bouches-du-Rhône was only on yellow. However, the precipitation was greater in the 13th than in the 06th. And it was the Phoenician city and its surroundings (the Pennes-Mirabeau in particular) which suffered heavy flooding. Causing the closure of nearly thirty schools and serious disruptions to public transport.
Why such a false path, such a lack of anticipation? A few months ago, Jean Pansu, FO representative at Météo-France and now retired, warned that the real bleeding in the workforce was not going to happen without major consequences. For him in short: the automation of forecasts cannot make up for the loss of forecasters, because this automatism cannot do without “human support.” “If we want to be precise in our forecasts, there are things that automatic systems cannot do.” His signal was clearly not heard by the governing bodies of the public establishment.
At a time when global warming imposes new rules by favoring the multiplication of local events, how can we do without more and more meteorologists who know the terrain and work close to their forecast zone? How can we predict what will happen in Marseille when we are alone on duty, in Paris or in Toulouse (place where the spercomputers are located), to manage all the departments of France and Navarre? “The elimination of staffunderlines Paul Marquis of Météo du 13, the lack of budget, foresight and investment leads to the collapse of this public service, which is nevertheless essential for the security of property and people in France.”
And what about these famous infra-departmental forecasts? Those which make it possible to specify within the same department the areas which are the most threatened. They would have been very useful to possibly put the east of Bouches-du-Rhône in orange and the west – where the showers were much less heavy – in yellow.
Yes, but they are only activated for the risks of “wave-submersion” or avalanches. Neither for heavy precipitation nor for strong winds. Which for the south-east of France is still a shame with the mistral and the intense Mediterranean or Cévennes episodes. But here too if Météo-France decides to extend them to all weather phenomena, it will still need teams of forecasters installed in situ for them to be effective. We have the impression of having to deal with a squaring of the circle…
Météo-France’s response
Contacted by telephone, Météo-France responded in writing that “the Bouches-du-Rhône department was placed on yellow rain-flood vigilance and yellow thunderstorm vigilance. This Tuesday morning, the stormy rains were intense in Provence Alpes Côte d’Azur, with 48 mm falling in Marseille between 7 a.m. and 8 a.m. and of the order of 65 mm in 3 hours (Editor’s note = up to 80 mm during the intense episode), which caused intense runoff and flooding.
“This rain is the effect of a well-identified storm front circulating quite quickly, causing short and localized precipitation, but nevertheless locally intense, with notable effects in the Marseille metropolitan area.”
“The level of meteorological danger for Bouches-du-Rhône did not justify being placed on orange alert in terms of the available forecast elements, unlike other departments in the region, for which the intensity of the rains and the possibly stationary nature of the storm cells had been anticipated.”
“This is particularly the case in the Alpes-Maritimes, where the accumulations observed were high on a larger scale in the department. They reached 30 to 50 mm widespread in the Baous and the Nicois hinterland, and between 80 to 90 mm on the Mercantour.
“The relevance of the level of vigilance in this case will be analyzed as part of the evaluation process of this system, as is the case for all episodes that have caused consequences on the ground.”
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