42 ° C in Nantes, 39.3 ° C in Brest: many records fell on Monday from the Aquitaine basin to Brittany. It is the third most intense heat wave observed in France since 1947, and we do not yet see the outcome.
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An Atlantic facade turning crimson and the rest of the scarlet red country: the heat wave has reached its culmination on the scale of France Monday, July 18. The entire territory was placed in heat wave, with 15 departments in red and 69 in orange. The event has reached a completely unprecedented level in the West, where historical heat records have fallen en masse. If these regions will now refresh itself, the country will continue to undergo a heat wave from which we do not yet see the outcome.
“Most areas of the Aquitaine Basin to Brittany have never lived such a hot day, observes François Gourand, forecaster in Météo-France. In the west, we recorded between 13 and 14 ° C Above normal, and up to 15 or 16 ° C in certain places. It is enormous and very rare. “Among the exceptional values, the weather services note 42.6 ° C in Biscarrosse (Landes) – the record In France Monday-, 42 ° C in Nantes (Loire-Atlantique), 41.5 ° C in La Roche-sur-Yon (Vendée) or 42.4 ° C in Cazaux (Gironde), where a serious fire rages. More than 13,000 hectares of forest have already burned in La Teste-de-Buch and Landiras.
The extremes even affected the tip of Brittany, where the historic temperature record was broken in Brest with 39.3 ° C, against 35.2 ° C recorded in the city in 1949. A Ouessant, the part The most western in mainland France, Mercury reached 32.1 ° C, a first, this island of Finistère being so far the only plain zone to have never crossed the bar of 30 ° C.
Fourteenth hottest day since 1947 2>
This day “seems to be the 14 more hot observed in France since 1947. out of the other 13, 10 in August 2003 and 3 in July 2019. This heat wave is therefore the third plus Intense observed, “says Gaétan Heymes, forecastist Météo-France. He specifies that out of the 154 stations of the main Météo-France network, 23 broke their absolute record, every month combined.
“What is striking is that the records were broken by 3 or 4 ° C, which is enormous and of a very low probability, notes the climatologist (CNRS) Christophe Cassou. C ‘is comparable to the heat dome of Canada. “At the end of June 2021, the village of Lytton, British Columbia, had recorded an exceptional record of 49.6 ° C, that is almost 5 ° C above the maximum previous Canada.
The hexagonal episode, started on July 12, was also caused by a heat dome, caused by a vast anticyclone located on Western Europe which has trapped hot air by preventing the circulation of the masses air. In a second step, a “cold drop”, that is to say a high altitude depression, resulted in a rise in the burning air from North Africa and Spain and contributed to intensification Heat wave from Sunday. It now affects the whole of Western Europe, also causing forest fires in Spain or Portugal, as well as temperature records in the United Kingdom and Ireland.
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