“A stormy episode is setting up over Spain and moving up towards the Pyrenees”, indicates Météo-France on its site in the afternoon of Thursday July 27. The bulletin predicts “temporarily strong thunderstorms in the evening of Thursday and night of Thursday to Friday over the Pyrenees and southern Occitania”. As a result, four departments are placed on orange alert for thunderstorms: these are Pyrénées-Atlantiques, Hautes-Pyrénées, Haute-Garonne and Gers.
Orange vigilance is signaled from 6 p.m. until midnight. “The episode has not started,” says the 4 p.m. bulletin. However, the four departments are already on yellow alert for the end of the afternoon. “At the end of the afternoon, the first storms will approach the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, they will gradually spread to the other departments in orange vigilance in the evening”, it is specified. Storms that may be “accompanied by violent gusts of wind (90 to 110 km / h), hail and heavy rain (30 mm in a short time)”.
Six other departments in the south-west are affected by a yellow storm alert: these are Ariège, Pyrénées-Orientales, Aude, Tarn, Hérault and Aveyron.
In addition, five departments in northern France have been on “rain-flood” yellow vigilance since Thursday afternoon: Nord, Pas-de-Calais, Somme, Aisne and Ardennes.