Heat and less rain than usual. This is the scenario favored by Météo France for the country for the next quarter, namely the months of July, August and September.
The meteorological organization put its new seasonal forecast online on Friday. This makes it possible to identify trends for the months to come with percentages to classify the probability of this or that event occurring.
Météo France is interested here in temperatures and precipitation. No percentage reaches 80 or 90%. There is therefore no strong, overwhelming trend that would make the realization of one scenario rather than another very likely, but a dominant one is taking shape. It consists of anticipating that the next three months are more likely to be warmer than the seasonal averages, but also drier, in the south of France for this second factor.
In detail, Météo France estimates that across the country there is a 50% chance that it will be hotter than average over the next three months. This also means that the level also reaches 50% so that this is not the case. But this last hypothesis is split into two possibilities: 30% chance that the temperature is average, 20% that it is lower. This therefore makes the hypothesis of a hot next quarter the most likely, a level of 50% not being at all a guarantee.
In the case of the south of France, however, the trend is clearer. Météo France results in a probability of 70% concerning a hot scenario. The next three months have only a 20% chance of being within seasonal averages and barely 10% of being cooler.
As for precipitation, the trend for the coming quarter is less clear. The only thing that would emerge would be that it would be drier than average in the southern part of the country. As with temperatures, the probability is 50%. And as with temperature, there is the same number of chances of something else happening. But as with temperature too, this is the scenario with the highest probability. Météo France considers that the south of the country has a 25% chance of being watered normally and 25% of being watered more than usual.
For the north of the country, on the other hand, no trend emerges. All scenarios have the same probability of occurring. Identifying a preferred trend is therefore impossible.
At the end of May, Météo France published its trends for the June-July-August period. Also covering a good part of the summer, it was identical: 50% chance of having a hot summer, 70% chance in the South, and 50% chance that the summer would be dry in the South. The only difference lies in the fact that the area which would be dry would now go further north of the country and cover a larger part of the territory.
The seasonal trend is by no means a day-to-day forecast.
Météo France insists in any case on one point: “This bulletin does not make it possible to predict the details of the weather conditions for the coming months day by day or even week by week. It only attempts to determine the trends expected on average over the quarter (…) An event lasting between a few days and a few weeks can only be anticipated a few days in advance.”
In other words, the seasonal trend does not allow us to give the weather locally on a day-to-day basis. On average, summer can be hot but occasionally have cool periods, and conversely, being rather cool but with hot periods. Similarly, summer can be generally dry without excluding significant precipitation on certain days and even floods.
The seasonal trend is established for areas of 1000 km². This is too large an outline to be locally accurate. Finally, it is more reliable for temperatures than for precipitation.
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