France suffers from a lack of rain over a large part of the country, warns Tuesday Météo-France, some cities like Paris have not received a single drop of water since the beginning of summer. "Since July 2018, the rainfall in France is marked by a deficit that persists especially in the regions of the Grand-Est, Burgundy-Franche-Comté and Auvergne," says Météo-France in a bulletin. "In June, precipitation, still deficits on the North-East, Occitania, the Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur region and Corsica, were however frequent and abundant in the west of the country."
This year, "from July 1 to 10, the rains were almost absent in the northern half", continues Météo-France, while thunderstorms have affected the regions of the Pyrenees south of the Massif Central and locally in the PACA region and the north of Corsica. "Some cities in the North have had no rain since the beginning of summer on June 21," says Patrick Galois, forecaster at Météo-France. There was "no drop of water in Paris, which has never happened between June 21 and July 15", but also in Chartres and Chateaudun in the Eure et Loire or Trappes in the Yvelines.
In "seventh position of the driest years"
If the humidity of the superficial soils was close to normal until June, the heat wave at the end of June helped to dry the soil. Since, "we stay in relatively high temperatures with wind, which promotes evapo-transpiration," says the forecaster. According to Météo-France's drought indicator, calculated since 1958, "we are in seventh place in the driest years", after years of historical drought like 1976 and 2003.
No noticeable changes are expected in the days to come, except for a "small degradation in the day of Thursday with possibility of some rains but weak in a small northern half," says Patrick Galois. From Sunday, the good weather should reign over the whole of the Hexagon, with high temperatures, he continues.
There are several types of drought, explains Météo-France in its bulletin: "the meteorological drought corresponds to a prolonged deficit of precipitations", "the drought of soils, known as" agricultural ", is characterized by a deficit of water of the superficial grounds ( between 1 and 2 m deep), sufficient to alter the good development of vegetation "and" the hydrological drought (which) is finally manifested when lakes, rivers or groundwater show abnormally low levels ".