Short but intense episodes: the violent thunderstorms which hit the west and the center of France, Sunday June 18, in the late afternoon and in the evening caused flooding, a mini-tornado as well as disruptions train traffic and power outages. In its last bulletin issued shortly after 11 p.m., Météo-France, which had kept thirteen departments on orange alert for part of the evening, however lifted the alert.
At the end of the afternoon, the meteorological organization had first placed forty-one departments on orange alert for thunderstorms. Météo-France noted that the stormy line extended from the Center to the Paris region and Upper Normandy, while thunderstorms started over Burgundy and thunderstorms from Spain went up into the Bay of Biscay. The agency then narrowed their list to thirty-three shortly after 8 p.m.
Strong winds and “tornadic episode”
When the thunderstorms broke out, gusts of wind at 105 km/h were recorded in Orléans (Loiret), and a “tornadic episode” took place in the town of Yvetot (Seine-Maritime). Hailstones “from 2 to 4 cm” also fell in the Cher, still according to Météo-France. The wind also blew strongly in Paris, with a gust recorded at 99 km / h by the organization at its station in Parc Montsouris, located in the south of the capital.
On social networks, many videos showed streets in downtown Dieppe (Seine-Martitime) transformed into torrents, while Météo-France mentioned in a press release “high rainfall intensities recorded in Normandy”.
These storms also caused power cuts in Ile-de-France, with 11,000 homes without electricity in Val-d’Oise, the manager of the RTE electricity transmission network announced on Twitter after 7 p.m., before warning that “Most of the homes were able to be resupplied,” around 8:30 p.m. “Our teams are working to restore electricity to the few hundred homes still without power,” he added.
Around 1,000 homes were also without electricity early Sunday evening in Eure. According to Enedis, more than 2,000 homes without electricity in Sarthe at 8:30 p.m.
Resumption of rail traffic
These weather events also disrupted several train lines in the Paris region. “The entire rail network on Ile-de-France and the greater Paris basin is disrupted for the whole evening, with a large number of incidents. The teams intervene as they go, “said a spokesperson for the SNCF to Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The incidents began around 6:30 p.m., with trains blocked at the station in Paris, stopped in the suburbs, or held up in the provinces for those traveling towards the capital. Traffic was notably interrupted on certain lines departing from the Gare du Nord, SNCF told the press agency, like the Paris-Amiens line.
At around 9:30 p.m., he nevertheless indicated that traffic had resumed “everywhere” and “in particular at the Gare du Nord”. “All the trains will arrive at their destination [Sunday] evening, late,” assured the SNCF spokesperson, who added that agents from the SNCF network had to intervene at the end of the afternoon to cut off trees and clearing fallen branches from the tracks.
On the national 118, which allows to reach the capital from the south, floods also blocked traffic in the evening at the height of Bièvres (Essonne), according to videos published on social networks, confirmed by the prefecture which specified that the direction of the roads of Ile-de-France (Dirif) was on the spot.
At the start of the evening, the Val-d’Oise firefighters had around a hundred interventions in progress, mainly related to the wind (falling objects, electric wires, etc.), but no injuries were recorded at this stage.
Before the storms passed, the City of Paris closed parks, gardens, squares and cemeteries from 4:30 p.m. The concert by British musician Sting, which was to take place in the park of the Château de Fontainebleau (Seine-et- Marne), has been canceled, announced the prefecture, like the last evening of the Rio Loco festival in Toulouse, according to a press release.
