“Soon, our record will be dethroned”: in Vérargues, the heat wave revives the memory of the 46 degrees of June 2019

It was three years ago but everyone here has a burning memory: on June 28, 2019, Vérargues (Hérault) broke the heat record. The temperature in this village of some 700 inhabitants, in the midst of a heat wave, rose to 46 degrees that day. A figure never before reached in France. And the first to have noticed it remembers it as if it were yesterday: “It was extremely hot, remembers Bernard Valette, a retired farmer. I went to check the temperature, as I did every day, on my weather station installed in front of my vines. When I saw 46 degrees, I immediately called Météo France! Because even during the hot weather, the mercury never rises so high. »