Will the Hérault be spared the frost? Our farmers, arborists, winegrowers will do this Monday morning the results of the expected cold snap overnight from Sunday to Monday. Until then, our department has not been too affected by this phenomenon which has hit the Garonne valley hard, the Charentes, the Dordogne, as far as the Pyrénées-Atlantiques. In Montpellier, the ITK company works on modeling the effects of climate on agriculture and publishes risk maps for farms. “There will be damage, that’s for sure”warns Serge Zaka, one of its agroclimatologists.
Two possible scenarios
“There are two scenarios,” said Serge Zaka. “We have an optimistic scenario where the wind continues to blow in the Rhône valley and on the plains of Hérault”. In this case, we could go below 0°C in certain places in the department, such as the north of Pic Saint-Loup or the north of Béziers. “We would have yield losses of 5 to 20%”if this scenario is confirmed.
The pessimistic scenario is when the wind calms down, “there, we could have temperatures down to -3°C or -4°C in the Mediterranean hinterland and we would approach -1°C to 0°C in the middle part of the department”, explains Serge Zaka. The Doctor of Agroclimatology fears in this case yield losses “up to more than 50%” on some farms.