Depression Kirk: more than 64,000 homes deprived of electricity, rains intensify over a large part of the territory

Arriving in the territory on Wednesday October 9, the Kirk depression intensified throughout the day. More than 64,000 homes are without electricity, mainly in the South according to Enedis. The storm moved towards Île-de-France in the evening, where Seine-et-Marne was placed on red flood alert. “Rapid rises and localized overflows could be observed as early as Wednesday evening,” warned Vigicrues, the specialized government site. According to the same source, “on many tributaries in the Ile de France region or close to the Ile de France, significant or even major flooding and a lot of runoff could occur, depending on the precipitation actually observed ».

Mobilization of “all state services”

At the end of a crisis meeting in Paris, the Minister of Ecological Transition Agnès Pannier-Runacher highlighted the mobilization of “all state services” and called “Everyone be careful”. She mentioned at this stage “punctual disruptions, some power cuts”. “It’s serious, it can go quickly. » If, according to the Minister for Transport, François Durovray, the difficulties at the end of the day on Wednesday remained “limited”, many departments are on alert.

In addition to Seine-et-Marne, where school transport will be suspended on Thursday, 32 departments were placed on orange vigilance on Wednesday, including 21 for “rain-flooding”, ten for “wind” and three for floods (Alpes-Maritimes, Meurthe- et-Moselle, Vendée), according to a bulletin published Wednesday at 6 p.m. Since the day before, the ex-hurricane, formed off the coast of Senegal, had already brought “intense rain” from Vendée to the Ardennes and strong gales in the southwest of the country, disrupting rail traffic in New Aquitaine.

“Since yesterday evening, the accumulations of rain have already been considerable from Vendée to Loire-Atlantique with 93 mm in Noirmoutier, 67 mm in Nantes, 44 mm in Angers”alerted Météo-France on X. In Vendée, many roads have been and sometimes still are flooded in many sectors. Firefighters have carried out 134 interventions since the start of the storm and received more than 536 calls. In Loire-Atlantique, “several departmental roads are flooded and subject to total or partial cuts”writes the prefecture in a press release. A partial closure of the Nantes ring road is also envisaged, according to Bison Futé. In the Pays de la Loire, “heavy rain led to flooding on the tracks” between Saint-Nazaire and Le Croisic, Nantes and Pornic as well as between Nantes and Saint-Gilles.

A month of rain in one day

In New Aquitaine, Météo France recorded gusts of 211 km/h during the night from Tuesday to Wednesday in the area of ​​the Iraty ski resort, in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques. “Such gusts in Iraty are not usual”explained to AFP Christophe Dedieu, president of the Météo Pyrénées association, who expects “some mayhem very locally in very exposed areas” of the Pyrenean foothills, for example the Gave de Pau valley.

A month of rain is expected to fall in one day on an axis going from Vendée to Champagne-Ardenne, to the south of Picardy via the Paris region. Météo-France warns of the risk of flooding, due to “soils already very wet” after a particularly rainy month of September.

Already record rainfall in September

First passing through the Iberian Peninsula, Kirk caused damage in Portugal, with 400 trees uprooted in the region of Porto, the large city in the north of the country. 300,000 people were deprived of power there.

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 high 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.