Due to the strong winds, several departments underwent electricity cuts on Monday and disturbances on the rail network.
mo12345lemonde with AFP
Rafales up to 158 km/h in Brittany and tree falls: after the exceptional sweetness of the start of the year, winter depression Gérard struck a large north-west quarter of France on Monday January 16, where several departments have undergone power cuts and disturbances on the rail network.
Some 90,000 customers were deprived of electricity late Monday morning, two thirds of which in the west, according to the manager of the Enedis network. For its part, the SNCF has identified “more than thirty incidents” linked to the storm, sometimes due to trees fallen on the tracks, in Brittany, Normandy, Pays de la Loire and Center-Val de Loire, as well as in Seine-et-Marne and Champagne-Ardenne.
A sixty -year -old motorist died in Gironde after struck a tree who fell in the night “probably” because of the winds, said firefighters.
“special follow -up”
Depression, named Gérard, is described by Météo France as a “classic winter storm for the season, but requiring particular follow -up”. “It is a storm as it happens several times a year,” explains Frédéric Long, a forecaster joined by the France-Presse agency. The Météo France site lists six to thirteen storms per year in the last decade, with the exception of the 2019-2020 season with eighteen episodes. This time, “we had very strong gusts on the coasts, but not exceptional values”, underlines Mr. Long.
On the Breton and Norman coast, the winds exceeded 120 km/h in many places. 158 km/h winds were noted at the tip of Raz in Finistère – a record for this station since 2017, but far from the absolute record of 216 km/h measured in 1987. In the land, at the start of the morning, 119 km/h were noted in Caen and 113 km/h in Damblainville (Calvados).
The storm was however “losing [in] intensity” in the afternoon of Monday by escaping to Belgium and the Netherlands after having touched the far west of the Grand Est and Burgundy-Franche regions- County. Monday shortly after 3 p.m., no more department was placed in orange orange For strong winds .
After a very exceptional sweetness for a month of January, France also knows the beginnings of real cooling, with 1 to 5 ° C of minimum in general on Monday. “We have a cooling after having known since December 20 until mid-January a period of great sweetness,” according to Mr. Long. “On average, on France, it is a record of winter sweetness for this period, more than 1 ° C above the previous record,” he said. “There, we go under a flow of northwest with air from the Arctic and we will have a colder cold from Wednesday,” announces the forecaster.
Another storm, Fien, arrives in the southwest from Spain on Tuesday. The disturbance of the next few days “will mainly give rain in the plain, but then it can give snow, including in Ile-de-France and Normandy”, according to Mr. Long. It is however too early to know if the temperatures on the ground will be low enough for the snowpack to maintain itself.
snow announced
Already, the snowfall that started on Monday morning on the Massif Central Monday morning, scheduled to hold on the ground from 600 to 800 meters above sea level, justified orange vigilance for snow-verglas on the Cantal and La Lozère. In the coming days, snow is expected in quantity and at low altitude on most massifs, especially the south of the Massif Central where snowfall have already started and on the Alps from 600 to 800 meters, from 1,000 to 1 200 meters on the Pyrenees, and from 500 meters on the Vosges and the Jura. In the northeast, snow is also expected on the first trays from 300 to 400 meters.
For Tuesday, strong winds are expected this time on the Southwest at the start of the day. “In view of uncertainty, there is not excluded a rise in subsequent vigilance from Ile-de-France to the borders of the Northeast,” warns the national meteorological service. Tuesday, Corsica-du-Sud will be on orange alert for risks of wave-submersion.
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