Violent thunderstorms crossed France on Saturday. In Rouen, where some streets were transformed into a torrent by the violence of the storms, a woman in her thirties died trapped under a car after being carried away by the waters, we learned from the cabinet of the mayor of the Norman town. In the Landes and Gers, hailstones of several centimeters fell on part of the Armagnac vineyard, said winegrowers and local officials.
“This hail corridor followed the entire Lando-Gers border and it is estimated that between 4,000 and 5,000 hectares of vines were affected and several tens of thousands of hectares of crops were affected in the Gers,” said the president of the Bernard Malabirade departmental chamber of agriculture. “In Montreal-du Gers, we had hailstones bigger than a golf ball! “, according to the director of the Armagnac interprofession Olivier Goujon.
Hectraes of vines completely “chopped”
In Le Frêche (Landes), winemaker Nelly Lacave has found her 8.5 hectares of “chopped” vines. “In the vineyards, there is nothing left, the roof of our agricultural building is a giant Swiss cheese and in the house, windows have broken. My father who is almost 70 years old has never seen this, ”she said. Not far from there, in Labastide-d’Armagnac (Landes), the mayor Alain Gaube thinks he has “lost between 70 and 90% of (his) vines”. “On the ground, there is a large part of leaves and grapes. The grapes that remain (on the vine) are already brown, they are dead,” he laments. If no injuries are to be deplored in the Landes, 4,500 homes have been deprived of electricity.
Météo-France had warned that sometimes violent thunderstorms were going to develop in the South-West and progress towards the north and east of the country, accompanied by intense rains (locally 40 to 60 mm in a short time), gusts of wind and hail, particularly in the South-West and the Massif Central. In fact, the lightning illuminated the sky both in Brittany and in Center-Val-de-Loire, Normandy or Ile-de-France. Amateur photographers have posted images of the top of the Eiffel Tower struck by lightning on the networks.
Authorities call for vigilance
“State services and the means of @SecCivileFrance are mobilized, ready to intervene,” Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said on Twitter, inviting the population “to follow the advice of the authorities and to remain very watchful”.
In Vincennes, east of Paris, the We love green music festival had to be interrupted because “the conditions are not pleasant either for the public or for the artists”, announced a speaker on stage.
On the National Estate of Chambord (Loir-et-Cher), 30,000 unit scouts from France gathered for the Pentecost weekend had to be sheltered, including a third inside the castle. -same. “The storm passed around 4:30 p.m. It lasted a few minutes, but it was relatively strong and a gust of wind knocked down the tents of the Cubs,” explained Damien Tardy, in charge of press relations for the movement.
“Ten thousand young people, aged 8 to 12, were sheltered in the castle in cooperation with the prefecture”, the oldest “in a sloping plain”, according to him. “They are in tents under ponchos and were singing when I went to see them. Far from this stormy supercell, Corsica saw the mercury soar: a heat record for the month of June was recorded in Cap Corse, in the north of the island, with 37.4 degrees, according to Meteo-France.