From 05:00, Météo-France recorded an exceptional 27°C in Nice, 24°C in Lyon and Perpignan, or 23°C in Marseille or Toulouse and the mercury should reach between 35 and 38°C during the day. “over a large southern and eastern part of the country”.
This episode of heat is the most intense of all summer 2023 and “one of the latest with such a level of intensity”underlines the forecasting body.
Peaks even higher than Saturday were expected in the Toulouse south with 38 to 39 ° C and up to 40 to 41 towards the lower Rhone valley between Carpentras, Nîmes and Montélimar.
Like this last city where the temperature will be nine degrees higher than the average, the seasonal normals (measured over thirty years from 1991 to 2020) will be largely exceeded in the fifty departments concerned, explained to the AFP a forecaster from Météo-France.
It is in this stifling atmosphere that many motorists were still on the road this Sunday, a day classified as orange at the national level in the direction of returns by Bison smart, and even red in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes.
To anticipate, many have chosen early departures.
“A bit of air conditioning”
“We left Brousse-le-Château, so in Aveyron, (…) at 7:30 a.m. That makes us arrive at Monclar d’Agenais (Lot-et-Garonne) not too late, around 11:30 a.m. “rejoices Julien Segonzac, a business manager, on the Frontonnais area, between Toulouse and Montauban (31°C at 9 a.m.).
Julie Houille, en route to Brittany from Marseille, did the same: departure at 5:30 a.m., “we left the windows open as much as possible, then a little bit of air conditioning and we’ll be fine”she hopes.
In large cities, to try to relieve the populations, the town halls have put in place specific measures sometimes even reinforced this Sunday.
Additional patrols and arrangements for taking news of isolated people have been organized and the municipalities have invited residents to get closer to the “places of freshness”: air-conditioned swimming pools, parks or museums, often extending their opening hours.
In Marseille, the city announced free access to all municipal swimming pools from this Sunday until the end of the heat wave, as well as the night and day opening of the Catalans beach, near the Old Town. Port.
“We have to reactivate the right reflexes”insisted the Minister Delegate for Transport Clément Beaune during a visit to the Marseille-Saint-Charles station, encouraging people to pay attention to the most fragile: young children, the elderly…
Bottles of water are distributed free of charge in stations affected by heat wave vigilance, he said.
At more than 30°, the hens “no longer lay”
In Grenoble, as soon as it opened at 9:30 a.m., several dozen people lined up in front of the Jean Bron swimming pool and its three large open pools, noted an AFP journalist, even if the crowds in the municipal swimming pools were generally consistent to the August average.
In the west, in Bordeaux by 29°C in the shade at midday, the sun beat down on the glass roof of the halls of the Capucins market. Vincent Legrand, chicken breeder in the Dordogne, has been selling his eggs there for 7 hours. “Everything suffers with the heat. As soon as it is over 30°C, the hens no longer eat and no longer lay eggs. So we do everything to limit the temperature”he said.
The high temperatures also require increased caution in the face of the risk of fire, especially in the south-east: four forest massifs were closed in the Var, as were nine of the 25 massifs of the Bouches-du-Rhône.
According to Météo-France, comparable or even higher temperatures are expected on Monday and the heat wave should continue until the middle of the week.
The weather pattern creates a “heat dome”, “with the high pressures that block the heat on part of France”explained a forecaster. “The second ingredient is global warming, which increases the probability of having high temperatures so late”he pointed out.
