The sun will be scorching across France on Friday August 12, the day of the peak of the third heat wave of the year. Nineteen departments are placed in orange vigilance by Météo France, so temperatures of up to 41°C are expected. The 40°C threshold had only been exceeded once in the 1960s and once in the 1970s in France. It is bound to become more frequent. Follow our live.
The West on orange alert. Nineteen departments are on alert due to the high temperatures: Charente, Charente-Maritime, Dordogne, Finistère, Haute-Garonne, Gers, Gironde, Landes, Loire-Atlantique, Lot, Lot-et-Garonne, Morbihan, Pyrénées-Atlantiques, Hautes-Pyrénées, Deux-Sèvres, Tarn, Tarn-et-Garonne, Vendée and Haute-Vienne.
A taste of the heat of 2050. The summer of 2022 is already approaching what would be “an average mid-century summer” in one of the pessimistic scenarios of global warming, according to Jean-Michel Soubeyroux, forecaster at Météo France. Even in an intermediate scenario, around 2050, the people of Lyon could, for example, experience 35 tropical nights per year, instead of 14.
Exceptional drought. Less than a centimeter of rain fell on average in July in France and lThe water tables are emptying to a worrying level, warned the Bureau of Geological and Mining Research (BRGM). It is forbidden to water in a large part of France and 73 prefects have even banned water withdrawals from farmers in all or part of their departments, a ban that is not always respected.