Destroyed vines, devastated wheat and barley fields, damage to buildings, pierced roofs... The intense storm which crossed France on Saturday was a "real disaster" for agriculture, said Sunday to AFP the president of the FNSEA, Christiane Lambert.

The damage was noted across France, with "more than 40 departments affected by hail", she added.

"It's a real disaster."

The damage goes from Brittany to Gers and Landes via Indre-et-Loire or even Allier, she noted.

"This is the year of superlatives"

These bad weather caused one death in Rouen and fifteen injuries throughout France, including two serious ones.

The wind blew at more than 100 km / h in places, for example 103 km / h in Saint-André-en-Terre-Plaine in Yonne, according to Météo-France.

In some municipalities, the equivalent of a normal month of June of rain fell in just 12 hours: for example 74 mm in Saint-Yan in Saône-et-Loire, or Donnemarie-Dontilly in Seine-et-Marne, according to Meteo-France.

The most struck departments were Allier, Aveyron and Saône-et-Loire.

For farmers, the scourge of hail adds to other difficulties encountered in recent weeks, after a month of May classified as the hottest and driest on record in France, an unusual heat episode made more likely with the change climatic.

However, the link between storms and climate change remains uncertain.

“It's the year of superlatives: the hottest, the driest and now with the most hail,” lamented Christiane Lambert.

"The accumulation, multiplication and even addition of these climatic events is disconcerting."

“There is no possible protection”

Anti-hail nets are powerless in the face of very intense bad weather such as France has just experienced, she also noted.

“When it comes to hailstones the size of ping-pong or tennis balls, even the sheet metal roofs of buildings are pierced.

So there is no possible protection”.

"We are going to study, department by department, where it is necessary to trigger the agricultural calamity device, and we will do it as quickly as possible", promised Sunday Bruno Le Maire, Minister of the Economy, on CNews.

Policy

In the Loiret, Elisabeth Borne at the bedside of farmers affected by drought

Lille

Crops completely destroyed in Hauts-de-France and Grand-Est due to bad weather


  • Planet

  • Company

  • Agriculture

  • Thunderstorm

  • Weather report

  • Natural disaster

  • Fnsea