Saturday, June 29 was the most electric day of the year in France. Several tens of thousands of electric discharges were recorded in the French sky.
A particularly stormy day. Saturday, June 29th recorded a record number of electric shocks on French territory for the year 2024, while around thirty departments were placed on orange alert and a large part of the territory on yellow alert. An alert since lifted.
Several tens of thousands – between 32,497 and 131,706 – of discharges were counted on Saturday across the four corners of France by scientists from Météorage, a site specializing in the detection of lightning and a subsidiary of Météo France.
The interval between these numbers corresponds to the type of lightning in question, depending on their trajectory: some occur within the clouds themselves, others go from cloud to cloud while others still head towards the ground. Météorage counts 131,706 lightning flashes taking into account all types of lightning.
More than 42,000 lightning strikes detected
The Keraunos storm and tornado observatory counted 42,755 lightning strikes on Saturday. This represents a record since the beginning of 2024, according to data from the French tornado and violent storm observatory.
It is in Haute-Marne (6,091), Gironde (3,297), Meuse (2,966), Côte-d’Or (2,544) and Nièvre (2,165) that the Keraunos Observatory recorded the most electrical activity.
According to our colleagues at Le Parisien, the Météorage website considers that the Grand Est region recorded the highest electrical activity on Saturday with 11,709 lightning strikes falling to the ground, ahead of Bourgogne-Franche-Comté with 10,149 lightning strikes. With 2,991 and 2,408 lightning strikes on the ground, Nouvelle-Aquitaine and Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes were affected to a lesser extent on Saturday.
At the departmental level, Météorage also places Haute-Marne in the lead (5,543), with particularly affected municipalities such as Roches-Bettaincourt, Auberive and Le Val-d’Esnoms. The other most electric departments on Saturday were Côte-d’Or (2,904), Meuse (1,991), Nièvre (1,701) and Jura (1,694).
Heavy rainfall, hail, strong gusts of wind and intense electrical activity crossed a large part of France, from the South-West to the North-East, this Saturday June 29. Images immortalized by residents were able to bear witness to the intensity of the phenomenon. In Deux-Sèvres, a century-old redwood tree was struck by lightning and literally pulverized in seconds.
Jeanne Bulant BFMTV journalist
