“It really depresses me,” Larissa immediately confides to 20 minutes. Autumn may have started on September 21, but the weather observed for several weeks does not correspond to the season. The beaches are crowded, the sunny terraces, the thermometer displays summer temperatures, even at night. And Larissa, who responded to the call for testimonials from 20 minutes, preferred to see the colors of the Indian summer dawning. Our reader wants “to have cold, frosty mornings and see the leaves fall”.
However this weekend, the mercury should still show a more than pleasant climate, but… no season: 29 degrees are expected in Tarbes, 25 degrees in Marseille or 26 in Vichy or Biarritz, according to weather forecast. October could even become the hottest month ever recorded in France.
“Do you remember when in October we put on coats? »
A blow for fans of autumn and more broadly of mid-seasons because this year, the month of May also broke records in terms of temperatures. So some express their anger, others their concern, while others opt for the raclette on the terrace.
Everyone finally “feels the weather”, and more generally the news, according to their own “emotional thermometer”, explains to 20 Minutes Robert Zuili, clinical psychologist, specialist in social emotions. “Everyone is affected in a different way. Some will rejoice, others will be worried and, in this case, it may affect their morale, it is not so much linked to the event itself but to who we are. »
“Do you remember the time when it was October we would like to put on coats? “, thus ironically a nostalgic Twitter. On a meme creation account, we wonder what to do with mid-season coats left in the closet, when others have brought out the parasol. If Internet users have fun with these exceptional temperatures and come out with their best jokes, the morale of some French people can also take a hit. “I have the impression that summer will never end again and that there are no more seasons, still laments Larissa, decidedly in need of autumn. I just want it to stop, for someone, somewhere, to take it seriously and reveal the ways to go back and save the planet. »
Here, we can miss autumn, like everything that accompanies it. And as for Larissa, this mid-season zapping can cause you to lose all bearings. Create a feeling of nostalgia for that distant era when we wrapped ourselves in a plaid, our feet near the fire with a good hot chocolate. Everyone will react in their own way. If Larissa seems depressed, worried, lost… others will bounce on this nostalgia to “remember lost moments associated with pleasure”, explains the clinical psychologist, this “state of sadness which pushes to keep rituals which have the capacity to restore a kind of well-being.
“When they see that the off-season periods are shorter, some don’t find it normal, like Christmas under 15°C, it’s no longer Christmas”, further illustrates Robert Zuili who then evokes our capacity for resilience, to adaptation.
And the most resilient among us (including the raclette fan surfer mentioned above) are not going to refrain from organizing a small raclette party, in short sleeves at the Palavas-les-Flots campsite. “It proves our ability to adapt. This is one of our characteristics as human beings”, confirms Robert Zuili, who takes the health crisis as an example: “We have seen it well with confinement, we have managed, for the most part, to remain locked up for several months. “.
This ability to bounce back, to recreate the flavors of autumn while summer continues to squat again depends on this famous “emotional thermometer”: “He who is afraid will seek reassurance [avec une bonne raclette, donc], whoever is angry will engage in a struggle,” notes our emotion expert. This fight will then remain: that of evoking the serious consequences of global warming when the weather is pink on the terrace and the heat wave is no longer there to remind us how much global warming threatens us.