After weeks of intense heatwave, heavy rainfall and storms were expected on Thursday in the south-eastern departments of France, with rainfall records broken for the month of August. On the Alpes-Maritimes side, around 123 millimeters of showers fell, according to the first readings from “La Chaîne Météo” – 133.7 millimeters in Levens – far surpassing the previous record of 59.8 millimeters measured in 2023, underlines BFMTV.
In the neighboring department of Var, the prefecture reported “significant electrical activity”, with 1,378 lightning strikes recorded for the night from Thursday to Friday alone, accompanied by significant rainfall as in the municipalities of Draguignan and Seillans where 75 to 80 millimeters of water fell. At the height of the bad weather, 26,000 Var homes were deprived of electricity overnight. This Friday morning, there were only 1,000 households left, indicated the prefect of Var while urging “caution” when traveling.
In these two departments, placed on “thunderstorm” alert on Thursday, most festive and sporting events have been canceled and parks and gardens closed to the public. In Pégomas, in the Alpes-Maritimes, nearly 200 vacationers were evacuated overnight from a campsite on the orders of the prefect, under the Flood Risk Prevention Plan, before being taken care of in municipal rooms.
In Corsica, where the bad weather was expected to continue mid-morning, several hundred people staying in open-air hotels were taken into preventive shelter while strong wind gusts ranging from 100 to 120 km/h were recorded during the night from Thursday to Friday. Air transport on the island was also disrupted and around thirty flights canceled, reports France Info. Access to massifs and watercourses remains prohibited until Friday evening, the prefecture announced.
Swimming prohibited
“We evacuated the campsites which were in sensitive areas as requested by the prefecture. Indeed, as the storms could be stationary and significant and it is an area with valleys which can run off a lot (...), we had the campsite evacuated to avoid a disaster and especially a catastrophic evacuation,” explained Marc Combe, first deputy of the municipality, at the microphone of BFM Côte d'Azur.
For its part, the Alpes-Maritimes prefecture is still calling for vigilance this Friday on its X account: “The current stormy spells may last this morning before easing in the middle of the day. Rapid floods can occur in the morning or early afternoon depending on the location of the rains, particularly on the upstream Var, the middle Var and their tributaries,” we can read even if, at the end of the morning, no “major damage” was to be deplored. Lightning struck several times, notably a power line in Cannes requiring the intervention of firefighters but without causing any injuries.
This Friday morning, around 10 a.m., the city of Nice announced the reopening of its parks and gardens while in Antibes, swimming remained prohibited due to possible runoff and washout from rainwater networks. “Analyses are underway to confirm the good quality of bathing water,” specifies the municipality. The “thunderstorms” vigilance could be lifted early this Friday afternoon in the department with a movement of storm cells towards the Alps.
