Météo France placed five Departements in the south of France on orange alert for thunderstorms on Tuesday, August 16, and the downpours are expected to reach the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region overnight from Tuesday to Wednesday, with heavy rain forecast for the Monaco area by the late morning of Wednesday.
Roads and metro stations were flooded in Paris on Tuesday before the heavy rainfall moved to cover most of the country.
July was the driest month ever recorded by Météo France, and although the rain is welcome, it will arrive in heavy but short bursts and much of it will run off quickly, threatening to bring floods.
Météo France warns that the heavy rain will not hydrate the soil efficiently.
”We prefer rain that falls moderately over a long period of time than rain that falls very intensely over a very short time, as was the case this Sunday when the rain did not have time to penetrate the ground”, Patrick Galois, forecaster at Météo France, said on the TF1 news channel.
“It has rained very little in France since the start of the year. After a very dry winter, rainfall was rare in the spring, and the scorching summer did not help the situation. July 2022 was the driest month since records began in 1959, with an 85 percent rainfall deficit,” according to FranceInfo.
“It will take several episodes of this type to recharge the aquifers for a little longer,” said Yves Tremblay, hydrologist at the Hydrosciences laboratory in Montpellier interviewed by FranceInfo.
PHOTO: Rainbow over Monaco
