Vigilance heat wave? Records? Here’s what the weather has in store for Toulouse in the coming days
By Quentin Marais
Published on
You have to believe that the hearts of months follow each other and resemble each other, Toulouse. In mid-May, already summery temperatures beat on the Pink City, before the beautiful middle of June became historic, with a heatwave red alert unprecedented in Haute-Garonne. A month later, with July 14 fast approaching, it’s a new heat wave which will touch the fourth city of France.
A gradual increase
This second weekend of July is already announcing the color in Toulouse, with temperatures reaching the bar of 30 degrees Saturday and Sunday. It is then a gradual increase that will be orchestrated. “We are talking about a probable heat wave vigilance: the scenario is confirmed”, announces Valéry Mounot, forecaster for Météo France in the former Midi-Pyrénées region. ” Monday, we are at 36. Tuesday 37, Wednesday and Thursday 38, and Friday and Saturday we would be at 39. If, as he points out, “it is necessary to qualify the crooks in the very long term”, he notices something “convincing, is the gradual rise in temperature which seems to be rooted in the Toulouse plain”.
A shift to orange or even red?
A little less than a month ago, the Pink City was already going through an episode of heat, which had seen vigilance switch to orange, on Wednesday June 15, before turning to red, 24 hours later. ” On is moving inexorably towards heatwave vigilance next week, with temperatures that supplant the famous biometeorological indices across the Haute-Garonne, and over five consecutive days,” remarks Valéry Mounot.
These are the minimum and maximum night temperature thresholds, i.e., respectively, 21 and 36 degrees. “At the level of nighttime minimums, we remain, for the moment, on quite breathable temperatures. But in the middle of the week, they won’t go down not below the threshold of 21.”
“As of Monday, it is very likely that Haute-Garonne will switch, initially, to yellow vigilance. This will gradually happen, especially on Tuesday and Wednesday when we will not have a peak, but a sharper rise in temperatures. If I give credibility to the temperatures forecast from next Wednesday, we are characterized in meteorological criteria of orange vigilance.
Météo France is “not the only decision-maker”
As it should be recalled with regard to meteorological vigilance, “Météo France is not the only decision-maker on the color of the heat wave vigilance map. Santé Publique France also participates in the development process before any distribution”. The forecaster also adds that “the June heat wave was exceptional in its precocity, hence the red vigilance”.
Records in sight?
The temperature record observed by the Toulouse-Blagnac station for the seventh month of the year is 40.2, July 8, 1982. This is not the absolute record, since it dates from August 4, 2003, when the thermometer rose to 40.7°C in the Pink City.
“We are going to flirt with the historic record of 1982, we will see if we exceed it. If we give credibility to the data, we are at 39, so we are not at a record temperature. What is rather worrying would be the duration , even if it starts slowly, on a photo of maximum temperatures that is looming for next weekend.
Valéry Mounot recalls that the estimates for these July 16 and 17, 2022 “are to be qualified, because we are seven days away”. Although these are, for the time being, “suppositions”, and that it is “still early to qualify and quantify the severity of the heat wave to come”, “if this scenario is confirmed, the phenomenon would be remarkable by its duration.
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