This Saturday, August 9, 28 departments are placed in orange “heat wave” alert. A weekend marked by temperatures between 34 ° C and 40 ° C, and which can reach 41 ° C
A heat wave, the second to strike France this summer, will extend on Saturday on a large part of the south of the country where 28 departments are placed in orange “heat wave”.
From the Dordogne to Haute-Savoie via Cantal and Drôme, a large southern part of the country will experience a weekend marked by temperatures between 34 ° C and 40 ° C, and which can reach 41 ° C of the foot of the Cévennes at the lower Rhône valley, according to Météo-France. This Sunday, 40 departments and Andorra are on the orange “heat wave”.
“The hottest nationwide”
Maximums of 39.5 ° C in Saint-Côme-d’Olet (Aveyron) or 39.1 ° C in Tiranges (Haute-Loire) were already noted on Friday afternoon. In the Southeast, the nights will become very hot from the Pyrénées-Orientales to the Rhône Valley, with minimums between 21 and 25 ° C.
Monday could be “the hottest nationwide. The heat wave should continue until the second half of next week in the Southeast”. After a first heat wave from June 19 to July 4, this episode has been the 51st heat wave recorded in France since 1947.
“We note an acceleration of the occurrence of heat waves over time. This trend is well linked to climate change, which has a strong impact on temperatures in France,” Lauriane Baté, climatologist at Météo-France told AFP.
A “high” danger of forest fires
The episode is accompanied by a “high” danger of forest fires in the Mediterranean periphery, while the fire of exceptional magnitude in the Aude was fixed Thursday evening after having traveled 17,000 hectares of vegetation and cost the life of a person.
He also coincides with a weekend of hunting-crossed between motorists on the road or returning from vacation, with traffic announced as “difficult on all or part of the territory, from Friday 8 to Sunday 10 August”.
The most busy day of the weekend will be Saturday 9, classified orange at the national level in both directions and noted “very difficult in the direction of departures in the Grand-West, the North and Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, as well as in the Southwest in the direction of returns”, alert Bison Futé.
The SNCF, for its part, indicated that it has deleted several round trips on the Bordeaux-Marseille and Paris-Clermont lines in order to “anticipate” potential air conditioning breakdowns linked to the very high temperatures “in its oldest trains.” All the customers concerned benefit from the exchange or reimbursement of their tickets “, specifies the SNCF.