A snowy episode will cross the northern half of France until Thursday: 34 departments will gradually move to orange alert from 10 p.m. on the night of Tuesday to Wednesday.Significant risks of icy conditions are noted, sometimes accompanied by snowfall.Monitor the situation in real time.
CRISIS UNIT
A meeting will be held this evening at 5 p.m. at the interministerial crisis unit in the face of the vigilance which will affect a large part of the northern half of France from this evening.
UP TO 20 CM OF SNOW ON WEDNESDAY
In the evening of this Tuesday, light precipitation will begin from Normandy to Burgundy Franche-Comté. Rain which will progress during the night further north, sometimes in the form of snow then probably in freezing rain, explains Météo France in its bulletin.
“During the afternoon then in the evening of Wednesday, snow replaces the rain, initially from Normandy to Nord-Pas de Calais. This episode will cross the orange zone towards the northeast in progress the following night and the day of Thursday”, adds Météo France.
On Wednesday, snowfall accumulations could reach 7 to 10 cm, locally 10 to 20 cm in the Upper Normandy/Picardie/southern Nord-Pas-de-Calais area. The snowfall accumulations, which will arrive later in other regions, will be specified later.
EVOLUTION OF VIGILANCE NEXT NIGHT
During the night from Tuesday to Wednesday, orange vigilance will extend to 34 departments, still in the northern half of France.
18 DEPARTMENTS ON ORANGE VIGILANCE
Météo France has placed 18 departments on orange alert from 10 p.m. this Tuesday evening in the face of a high risk of snow and ice.
WELCOME
Hello and welcome to this live broadcast dedicated to a new episode of snow and ice which will affect the northern half of the country from Tuesday evening until Thursday.
Winter has well and truly settled in France. A snowy episode will cross the northern half of France from Tuesday evening to Thursday, accompanied by significant risks of ice until Saturday and snowfall “sometimes significant are expected from Upper Normandy to the Belgian border”, Météo-France warned on Monday. After “severe morning frosts” Tuesday “on the northern two-thirds of the country”from “-2 to -8°C from west to east”, the Irene depression will bring rain to Brittany at the end of the day which “will shift towards the east during the night, taking on a wintry character in the north of the country (snow or ice)”, announces the organization in a bulletin published on its website.
Wednesday, “sometimes heavy snowfall is expected from Upper Normandy to the Belgian border” and should briefly reach Île-de-France in the evening. “At the end of the day until Thursday morning, (..) the colder northern flow will once again gain ground and snow will follow rain in Île-de-France then from the Loire Valley to the Grand Est : this shorter episode could bring a few centimeters of snow to the ground locally.writes Météo-France.
Afterwards, “a mass of dry, anticyclonic air will favor sunnier weather, which will allow temperatures to drop at night, particularly on snow-covered areas where severe frosts are to be feared, particularly Friday morning and Saturday morning”. This snowy front follows a brief episode of national cold, which reached its peak on January 9, without however being exceptional in its intensity. On the other hand, cold episodes are becoming rarer in France as on a planetary scale, under the effect of global warming which reduces their probability, duration and intensity, according to climatologists.