On June 28, 2019, the heat was impossible when Bernard Valette approached his weather station. Every day since the early 1960s, as his father did before him, this farmer, a volunteer for Météo France, meticulously records the temperature in his vineyards in Vérargues (Hérault). But that day, in this village of 700 inhabitants, which has become Entre-Vignes since it merged with a neighboring town, the heat wave is intense. More than she ever was. Without trembling, Bernard Valette noted in his register the temperature he had just observed: 46 degrees.
“It was mounted at the very top of the sheet! “, confides this octogenarian to 20 minutes. Without knowing it, he is the first to have recorded the highest temperature ever reached in France. “If I was surprised?” I don’t know… We could clearly see that it was hot, very hot! “says Bernard Valette. “You know, he smiles, when you go out, whether it’s 40, 43 or 46, it’s pretty much the same! The next day, the front pages of the press are concerned about the 45.9 degrees observed by an automatic station of Météo France in Gallargues-le-Montueux (Gard), 8 km from the vines of Bernard Valette. We do not yet know that this farmer, passionate about meteorology, saw the mercury rise even higher.
“We opened the windows, and we closed them immediately”
Alerted, the Météo France teams then carried out major investigations in Vérargues, to confirm this sad record. Three weeks later, the temperature recorded by Bernard Valette is validated: the 46 degrees displayed by the winegrower’s weather station is officially the highest temperature ever recorded in France. “People said to me, ‘You won!’ I said, “What did I win? Me, I just write down what I see!” jokes the octogenarian. This day, Micheline Valette, his wife, remembers it as if it were yesterday. “I said to my husband, ‘Go see, go see the station!’, she says. There was no wind at all that day, she says. It was impressive. It had been very, very hot for three or four days already. We opened the windows and closed them again immediately. I’ve never been hot like this. »
No one in Vérargues ventures into the streets. “From 10 o’clock in the morning, there was no one left, recalls Micheline Valette. Everyone was at home. The stone walls were hot. This June 28, 2019 remained marked in the memory of Quentin Rey, also passionate about the weather. That day, the young man, who lives in Beaulieu, 7 km from Vérargues, climbs into his car, after a day’s work, in Castelnau-le-Lez. “When I left for work in the morning, I expected the temperatures to be high,” he says. It was in the afternoon, when I left my air-conditioned office, that I was confronted with reality. As an enthusiast, it may sound weird, but I wanted to experience coming home with the windows open, rather than with the air conditioning. “And it was” awful “, remembers Quentin Rey.
“I have no desire to live again” this heat
“The air was so hot it stung my eyes,” he explains. I ended up closing, and put the air conditioning! Safe harbor, this crazy weather forecaster can’t resist taking a “little tour” in his neighborhood. But “the body is clearly not made to handle these high temperatures,” he continues. The slightest effort is complicated. I went home to hydrate. The shutters closed, a fan with wet towels…” It was not until a little later, in the evening, that the young man learned that the Vérargues station had reached 46 degrees. “It was hard to believe between enthusiasts, confides the Héraultais, member of the community ofClimate Info. That’s crazy value. But I have no desire to live it again”, even if he knows well, unfortunately, that these heats, we will see others.
Christian, a grocer in Saint-Christol, the town that merged with Vérargues, was in business that day. It had no air conditioning. “But with the refrigerators, it was fine,” he recalls. Unfortunately, I know very well that we will live through others, episodes of this kind. Since then, when it’s hot, Christian adapts the opening hours of his small grocery store. “Instead of opening at 4:15 p.m., I open at 5 p.m.,” he says. “It encourages people not to leave their homes during the hottest hours. »
The vines ‘grilled like he had a barbecue’
For Rodolphe Coulondre, June 28, 2019 will remain a sad day. The intense heat wave that struck that afternoon in Vérargues completely “fried” his vines. “As if he had a barbecue,” he explains. The grains have completely dried out. Fortunately, in the plain, the vines were less impacted. But we had about 60 to 70% loss. And the following year, we had a minimum harvest. It took two years to recover. “That day, “it was as if we were taking a dish out of the oven, it was the same thing, continues the winemaker. We constantly had a hot flash coming at us. It was impossible to stay outside. It’s quite traumatic. »
In Vérargues, Bernard and Micheline Valette have been perfect witnesses, for more than 60 years, to climatic upheavals. “We are well aware of this in recent years”, breathes the Héraultaise. In the past, “moments of very hot weather, we had them, of course, in August and even in September. Me, I was doing the grape harvest at the time. And I guarantee you that at 2 p.m. it was hot. But 46 degrees, no. Never. In my garden, my flowers, I watered them two to three times a week. Today, if I don’t water them every day, well…” They die, the septuagenarian hardly dares to say.
If, today, all the stations have been automated by Météo France, her husband, Bernard, continues to note the temperatures every day, “for him, because it is his passion. And for the Muscat de Lunel Cooperative Cellar, too”. And he knows perfectly well that one of these days, perhaps he will note on his register, more than 46 degrees.