29.2 degrees on average in Toulouse: is this early meteorological summer the hottest in history?
By Quentin Marais
Published on
The week of July 14, 2022 promises to be heat wave in Toulouse, with values close to the 40 degree mark for several consecutive days. A month after an already very powerful heat wave. In the Pink City, are the last weeks historically hot ?
29.2 average
“We are moving inexorably towards a heat wave of vigilancenext week”, declare, to Toulouse news, Valéry Mounot, forecaster in the former Midi-Pyrénées region, Saturday July 9, 2022. And when anticipating this new heat wave, he drew a statistic, still about the Pink City. “The average maximum temperatures, from June 1, 2022 to July 8, 2022, is 29.2 degrees. “Why start on June 1st? Quite simply because it is the beginning of the meteorological summer.
Only 1976 and 2003 were warmer
The forecaster specifies that the data comes from the Toulouse-Francazal station, because “it has more than a century deep, the beginning of the measures dating from 1923″. The Toulouse-Blagnac station opened in 1947. This average of 29.2 for the maximum does it mean that the beginning of the meteorological summer of 2022, in Toulouse, is the hottest?
“2022 is not a record, it has already been warmer over the same period. But we are not far from it. The record, in Toulouse, is 2003, when there was an average of 30 degrees from June 1 to July 8. In 1976, we had 29.8. Of course, the year 2022 is, for the moment, in third position out of 100 years.
A warm mid-July, yes, but…
Two heatwaves in one month, extremely hot temperatures for several days… “we’re going to hear reactions like ‘two consecutive heatwaves in such a short time, it’s never happened, it’s never been so hot’, it is wrong, the obvious figures that it is, therefore, already happened“, tempers Valéry Mounot.
But regarding the future scenario, which could therefore see temperatures above 36 degrees on several occasions, the forecaster concedes “that the phenomenon would then be remarkable in its durationeven if the peak of maximum temperatures is looming for next weekend and it is necessary to qualify, because we are seven days away”.
What daily records for July?
As a reminder, the daily maximum temperature record recorded for the month of July, in Toulouse, is 40.2, on July 8, 1982, for the two weather stations in the Pink City. As for the absolute record of maximum temperature in the fourth city of France, it is 44 degrees displayed, by the Toulouse-Francazal station, on August 8, 1923.
A meteorological summer already in history
But whatever happens in the next few days, this meteorological summer has already gone down in history, in Toulouse. Indeed, on Thursday June 16, Haute-Garonne went into red vigilance heatwave. This had never happened for the department and the Pink City, already on high alert in January 2022, during the heavy rain that had fallen on the region.
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