Meteo France classified this Wednesday a dozen departments in orange vigilance to thunderstorms, on a western and central axis of the country, between 9 p.m. and 3 a.m. on the night of Wednesday to Thursday. The stormy deterioration is taking place in the south-west of the former Aquitaine region and will rise towards Limousin then the center on Wednesday evening. These storms should be accompanied by gusts of around 70 to 90 km / h (or even a little more very locally), heavy accumulations of rain that can reach 30 to 50 mm in one hour, as well as hailstorms.
Lot-et-Garonne, Charente, Haute-Vienne, Corrèze, Creuse, Indre, Cher, Nièvre, and Yonne, should be crossed by this episode in the afternoon, l current alert until Wednesday evening midnight. “The storms will lose intensity at the end of the following night, but stormy rains will continue, contributing to significant accumulations of precipitation over the entire episode” adds Météo-France.
Falling trees in the Gers
Similar phenomena had already been observed in the twenty-two departments placed in storm orange vigilance overnight from Tuesday to Wednesday, with in particular gusts of wind “over 130 km / h” observed locally in the Southwest.
In Tarn-et-Garonne, firefighters intervened 270 times during the night. A man was placed in absolute emergency, after being hit in the head after the collapse of a veranda. More than 9,500 homes were deprived of electricity in this same department, and more than 6,500 in the Gers according to Enedis.
In the department of Pyrénées-Atlantiques, heavy rain and hailstorms affected the sectors of the Basque villages of Espelette, Itxassou, Cambo-les-Bains, Hasparren, covering the ground with large hailstones, which damaged crops and resulted in localized flooding.