In three days, we went from sun that hits the skin to snow that makes your nose run. While Paris recorded a maximum of 22 ° C on March 28, it will not be more than 3 ° C this Friday, assures Météo France. A big gap that affects all regions of France to a greater or lesser extent. What to make say to the grandpa on their benches, that there is no more season and to the Internet users on Twitter: “Two days ago we were in our underwear on the balcony and tomorrow it’s snowing OKLM”. But are we right to be flabbergasted by this climatic yoyo? If for Christelle Robert, forecaster at Météo France, we can say that snow on April 1st is “a notable event”, not enough to say that the weather is doing anything big.
Moreover, at Météo France, we usually say that spring “is a season of contrasts”. Moreover, the channel has published a small graph which shows that every year for years there have been temperature differences at the beginning of spring. Up to 14.5°C difference in 2010 between April 28 and May 5. “In 2021, we had temperature records at the end of March followed by a late and historic frost on April 4 and 8”, also reminds the forecaster to those who have a bad memory.
Blame it again on global warming
The reason for these temperature differences is recurrent for the simple reason that it is seasonal. In spring, “France can be subject to the influence of air masses coming from the north of polar origins or to tropical air masses coming from the south, explains Christelle Robert. Those coming from the north are still very cold at this time since the northern arctic is just emerging from its winter period. »
But for the expert if we are more shocked in recent years, it is because of climate change (yes, we always come back to the same point). “With global warming, the vegetation on its cycle is a little ahead and therefore suffers more severely from these late cold waves. [également liées au réchauffement climatique] “. But these little early buds that freeze and die hit us and it has an incident on our lives, so inevitably we talk about it more.
The good news in all of this is that if frost is to be feared until Monday, a milder air mass should arrive on Tuesday, with gray weather and rainy periods, according to the forecaster from Météo France. There, you don’t really see what is joyful in this announcement, but the expert assures her, it is “good news for the lands on the drought front, because this year we had a soil moisture deficit. So we all think very hard about the humidity of the earth and we take our troubles patiently before the real return of the sun.