2023-09-04 19:24:09
The opportunity to immediately test the famous “oasis” courtyards in schools and to take beautiful photos of milky or yellowish skies, cluttered with dust from the Sahara, in the South-West. Since this Monday, a new “heat episode” has affected France with already its share of monthly but also absolute records. It was 24.4°C in Montauban overnight from Sunday to Monday, according to Météo-France it is quite simply “the hottest night ever measured” in the Tarn-et-Garonnaise prefecture, not even during the famous heat wave of 2003. In Toulouse, with 24.2°C during the night, the record fell for a month of September. Values of 38°C, even 39°C were recorded during the day in the Center-West.
“This afternoon at 2 p.m. we already had almost twenty monthly records broken, there will be many more at the end of the day”, assures forecaster Frédéric Nathan. It already predicts that the national thermal indicator – this average of temperatures in 30 stations spread over the whole territory – for a month of September, whose current record is 24.7 ° C, should be exceeded this Monday .
What to expect for the week
So why this torrid summer that is starting again? Because of a depression off Portugal, which turns counter-clockwise. “Ahead of this depression, we have hot air which was sucked in from the Maghreb and which gradually returned to the country with high pressures which have set in. We are now in a situation of blockage which will last all week with very hot air for the season, ”specifies the specialist.
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Tomorrow (Tuesday), the heat peaks “will drop very slightly, but the hot air will spread roughly from the north of Aquitaine and Occitanie to Île-de-France and reach the Rhône-Alpes region for the rest of the week”. For now, all weather models predict that the episode will last until the end of the weekend. “A little less hot air should come in from the west from Sunday and especially at the start of next week, but very gradually, but it will remain very mild for the season”, suggests Frédéric Nathan.
“Remarkable” but not yet exceptional
The level of heat expected this week is clearly “remarkable” for the season. But not exceptional. “Small hot flushes at least until mid-September are quite frequent,” notes Christine Berne, climatologist at Météo-France. A heat peak notably occurred in mid-September 2022 in the South-West, during which the mercury rose to 39.2°C in Mont-de-Marsan. We also sweated profusely from September 11 to 13, 2016 and from September 12 to 21, 1987. “We can’t say it’s unprecedented, but it can become so if the episode lasts a long time,” she concludes.
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