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FRANCE WEATHER

France set for frost and snow as colder weather arrives

Cooler air will sweep across France this week, with rain and temperatures that would be the norm for late-October – and even snow in the mountains, warns Météo-France.

Published: 11 September 2024 14:07 CEST
France set for frost and snow as colder weather arrives
Expect snow in the Pyrenees and Alps this week. (Photo by ANDER GILLENEA / AFP)

If you have found yourself throwing the duvet back on the bed or firing up the heating a little earlier than expected, you might wonder what has happened to the French weather – especially if you remember last September, when Rugby World Cup 2023 kicked off in a heatwave.

The French summer, it seems, ended suddenly at the start of the new school year – and things are only going to get cooler.

As Météo-France explains on its website, “a disturbance moving in from the Channel will sweep across the country between Tuesday evening and Wednesday, bringing with it cool air that will sweep across the country by Thursday”. 

This ‘cool air’ has its origins in the polar Greenland, leading – inevitably – to a significant dip in temperatures, and will bring rain to a large part of the country.

On Tuesday, temperatures in mainland France were 0.1C down on the average measured on September 10 between 1971 and 2000, as the cold air swept south.

On Wednesday, maximum temperatures will plateau below seasonal averages, at a maximum of 18C in the northern half of the country, and between 19C to 22C in the south-west, according to Météo-France.  

It’s on Thursday that the dip in temperatures will be most noticeable, falling some five to seven degrees below normal for this time of year – with the early-morning mercury hovering around areas more commonly seen in late October: 9C in Paris and Rennes, 7C in Lille, and 6C in Strasbourg and Clermont-Ferrand are forecast.

“The cool morning temperatures expected are quite rare for this time of year”, observes Olivier Proust, forecaster at Météo-France, speaking to Libération . “If we look at recent climatology, it doesn’t happen very often before September 15th”, he adds.

A morning frost is possible from the north-east to the Massif-Central, while snow should be expected above 1,500m in the Alps and 1,800m in the Pyrenees.

Thursday night promises to be even more chilly, with a risk of frost in the Massif Central and the north-east. 

Friday is set to be the coolest day, announces Météo-France, with “a temperature deficit of more than five degrees” across the country. 

So is the warm weather gone for the rest of the year. Not necessarily, Météo France says that the sun will return, and the weekend looks set to be a sunny one, with temperatures starting to rise again.

While these temperatures are a stark contrast with the warm September of 2023, “a cooler sequence in September is not incompatible with the context of climate change,” Météo-France said. 

However, cool spells like this are becoming “rarer and less intense than in the past”. 

The summer of 2024 was observed to be the hottest ever recorded on a global scale, according to the European Copernicus programme.  

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FRANCE WEATHER

One dead, campsite evacuated and homes without power as storms batter France

Storms battered a large swathe of France on Tuesday, leaving one man dead, thousands of homes without power and forcing holidaymakers to evacuate a campsite.

Published: 14 August 2024 10:35 CEST
One dead, campsite evacuated and homes without power as storms batter France

Storm observatory Keraunos counted more than 14,000 lightning strikes across the country between 12 noon on Tuesday and 3am Wednesday. In the Alps alone, 1,500 impacts were recorded in two hours.

The Auvergne Rhône-Alpes region of eastern France was the hardest hit, with 160,000 homes temporarily without power in Aix-les-Bains and Chambéry.

“Due to the storms, at 10pm, lightning caused faults on an RTE electrical substation and on a power line that supplied Chambéry and Aix-les-Bains,” network operator RTE said in a statement.

“When lightning struck the power line, the line automatically went out of power, to protect the rest of the network.”

Meanwhile, in the Côte d’Or département of eastern France, more than a month-and-a-half’s rainfall was recorded in a matter of hours, with weather stations in the area recording more than 100l/m2, or 10cm, of rain. In Haute-Marne, some 70l/m2 of rain (70mm) was reported.

In Isère a 78-year-old man died during the storms in the commune of Pressins – the local mayor said that he had been electrocuted while trying to reconnect his electrical supply.

Also in Isère, holidaymakers were evacuated from a campsite in Morestel because of heavy rains.

Many spent the night in a nearby village hall. The campsite’s manager told local newspaper Le Dauphiné Libéré, as he was ‘knee-deep in water’, following the storm – which he described as ‘a wall of water and wind’.

The SNCF network was also disrupted. A Paris-Grenoble train, which left the capital at 7.15pm on Tuesday, was held up in Bourgoin-Jallieu. It arrived four hours late in the Isère capital.

“The train stopped at Lyon, then at Tour-du-Pin due to thunderstorms. A train ahead of us had problems with its windscreen, so the whole line was affected,” Simon Grenier, a passenger on the Paris-Grenoble train, told BFMTV.

Traffic was also very difficult on the A43 motorway, where traffic was temporarily cut off.

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