While part of the country is placed on orange alert for thunderstorms and rain-floods, hailstones the size of a golf ball have been recorded in Côte-d’Or.
Hailstorms caused the first damage this Wednesday, May 1 in central France. While 19 departments are placed on orange alert for “rain flood” and/or “thunderstorms”, heavy rainfall has already been recorded in Burgundy, with the disturbances moving towards Île-de-France in the evening.
Vines covered in a white coat of hailstones, mudslides… Photos and videos multiplied in the early evening on social networks. Very quickly, farmers reported damage to their farms.
“Cereals are very impacted,” Luc Dupaquier, a farmer in Grandes-de-Vesvres in Côte-d’Or, testified on BFMTV. “On the roofs, there is a little damage.”
While the department has been affected by recent floods and frost, the farmer said he was “disgusted” and “disappointed”. An observation shared by Théo Dampt, winegrower in Collan, near Chablis (Yonne). “It’s starting to be a lot,” he lamented on our antenna. “It’s really bad luck.”
According to him, his operation was hit by bad weather “more intense than a few weeks ago”, including “hailstones of 5 to 6cm”.
“Virulent” storms still expected
“A stormy wave, organized and intense, will sweep the regions from northern Burgundy to Hauts-de-France between the end of the afternoon and the second part of the night from Wednesday to Thursday,” indicated Météo-France . And to add:
“In the departments placed on orange alert, storms are expected to be virulent with high intensities of precipitation, hail, squalls. Electrical activity will also be marked.”
Mudslides have also been reported in Cogny, in the Rhône and in Chablis in the Yonne.
After hitting the Côte-d’Or, the storms moved towards Yonne, and approached the Paris region around 10 p.m. According to Météo-France, “a virulent storm is heading towards Seine-Saint-Denis”, which “locally produces large hailstones and heavy rainfall”.
“Other storm cells are on the Yonne and the Aube and are heading towards Seine-et-Marne,” continued the meteorological agency.
