Rain, but not enough. After a particularly dry winter, the rains returned to France in March, even exceeding 40% nationally, but remained well below normal in the south where the drought continues to worsen, announced this Tuesday Météo France.
France also recorded its 14th consecutive month with an average temperature above normal (reference period 1991-2020).
The mercury was thus “on average 2 to 4°C below normal until March 7, then was most often 1 to 5°C above seasonal values, despite a little temporary coolness on 15 then on the 27th and 28th, before a further increase at the very end of the month”, indicates the institute of weather forecasts in a press release.
Excess rainfall of more than 40% on average
The national average temperature for the whole month was 10.2°C, 1.1°C above normal. But the most anticipated indicator remained rainfall, after a month of February marked by a record 32 days without rain.
March, the last month of the water recharge period before the arrival of spring, was certainly more watered, but did this make it possible to compensate for the deficits and above all to moisten the soil a little after a winter (period from December to the end of February) marked by a rain deficit of around 25%? In part and not everywhere, answers Météo France.
On average, rainfall was more than 40% above normal across the country, including accumulations of one and a half to two and a half times normal near the Channel coasts and borders. from the North, from the tip of Brittany to the north of Aquitaine and Occitania, or even locally more to the north of the Alps.
The deficit humidity index in 11 of the 13 departments
But the black spot remains the Mediterranean rim, where there was a 20 to 70% rainfall deficit from the Basque Country to Languedoc-Roussillon, the Ardèche Cévennes and the PACA region as well as in western Corsica. In the Var, the Alpes-Maritimes and the north-west of Haute-Corse, the deficit even exceeds 80%, with a monthly total remaining in places below 10 mm.
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Result: if “soil humidity has returned to values close to normal on the scale of France, the soils have remained very dry on the Mediterranean rim, even extremely dry in Languedoc-Roussillon”, indicates Météo France.
The humidity index remains deficient in 11 of the 13 south-eastern departments, with a historically low level in the Pyrénées-Orientales and in the Aude, where the state of the soil corresponds to that of mid-July and the end of June.
At the end of February, the Bureau of Geological and Mining Research (BRGM) announced that the French water tables were 80% at low or very low levels, raising fears of a new summer drought after the historic one of last summer.