Monday was the hottest day ever recorded in France after August 15, with a national thermal indicator which reached 26.63 ° C, Météo-France announced Tuesday to Agence France-Presse (AFP), in full exceptionally late heat wave for the season.
The previous heat record for the end of summer dated back to 2012, when the national thermal indicator (daily average of the mean air temperature recorded in 30 weather stations representative of the territory) had reached 26.44°C on the 19 august. The value reached on Monday, while the heat peak has not yet passed, is 5.8°C above the normal for the season (over the period 1991-2020), said Météo-France.
This temperature remains far from the absolute record of the national thermal indicator, set at 29.4 ° C on August 5, 2022. But the highest average temperatures are generally measured in late July-early August. France has been going through one of its latest heat waves since August 17, with temperatures expected to remain very high over a large southern half until Thursday.
In France, heat episodes occurring after August 15 are rare: only six have occurred since 1947, all in the 21st century (2001, 2009, 2011, 2012, 2016 and 2017), confirming the predictions of climatologists on the impacts of climate change. climate caused by greenhouse gas emissions.
Monday was particularly suffocating. At dawn, the thermometer already showed 30 ° C in Perpignan. In the afternoon, the mercury reached 35°C in Bordeaux and Marseille, 37°C in Lyon, Perpignan and Toulouse, according to Météo-France, with a maximum of 42.4°C reached in Vinsobres (Drôme), absolute record for this locality.
Tuesday at 5 a.m., it was 29°C in Nice, 26°C in Marseille, 25°C in Toulouse, 24°C in Cognac and 23°C in Lyon or Clermont-Ferrand, according to Météo-France. Tuesday noon, four departments will go into heat wave red vigilance, a very rare threshold crossed for the first time this year, while 49 others will be in orange vigilance.
Local records are still at risk of being broken, with 40 to 42 ° C expected in Drôme and Ardèche. The highest temperature ever recorded in France was 46°C in Vérargues, Hérault, on June 28, 2019.
