Two departments, Nord and Pas-de-Calais, will be on orange alert “snow and ice” this Wednesday according to the Météo France site, while the weather will be rainy over almost the entire country.
“The snow has replaced the rain on a northern half of the departments of Nord and Pas-de-Calais. It begins to hold on the ground in Flanders and on the heights of Artois. It is also snowing near the Belgian and Luxembourg borders with ground holding in places,” indicates the meteorological institute in its bulletin.
Apart from the two northern departments in orange snow-ice vigilance, sixty-four others will be in yellow vigilance, the Alps for avalanches, Lozère for snow and ice, and all those located north of a La Rochelle line -Lyon, as well as Corsica, for the wind.
The almost general rain over the country will give way to sunny spells in the afternoon over the Rhone Valley and Bordeaux. In the evening, the clearings will concern an entire southwestern half of the country.
Temperatures, which will be 5 to 12 degrees over the northern half in the morning, will drop to 6 to 15 degrees in the afternoon. On the south, temperatures of 7 to 15 degrees in the morning on the southern half will be 8 to 19 degrees in the afternoon.
The return of the rain should be good for French soils. After a scorching summer and an abnormally dry winter, the groundwater situation in France is critical. Many departments have been placed on drought alert or vigilance and the Minister for Ecological Transition, Christophe Béchu, asked the prefects at the end of February to take water saving measures in the departments concerned.