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.
On n’échappera pas au refroidissement : même si les températures étaient encore relativement douces ce matin, elles baissent en ce moment sur une large moitié nord. La fraîcheur sera sensible demain, matin et après-midi, avec des valeurs passant 5 à 10°C sous les moyennes 🥶❄️ pic.twitter.com/jc0PJncG9q
— La Chaîne Météo (@lachainemeteo) September 11, 2024
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.
Une descente d’air froid d’origine polaire [Groenland] va affecter la France cette semaine. L’animation ci-dessous matérialise très bien la coulée d’air froid/dense qui pourrait donner lieu a des températures bien basses pour la saison.
Magie des fluides atmosphériques 🤩 https://t.co/iQlC9uvr5h— Christophe Cassou (@cassouman40) September 8, 2024
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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