The heat, indisputably; the oven, sometimes; but never the furnace. This summer, in Eure-et-Loir, mercury has not once crossed the symbolic threshold of 40 °, even if it flirted with 18 and 19 July (38.5 °) in Chartres. But it was hot, even very hot, almost always, in the whole department. Like the meteorological bulletin recorded throughout the national territory.
prize “The weather was very dry, very hot, very sunny…” in Eure-et-Loir
“Great heat. About three degrees higher than seasonal norms”, stresses Franck Baraer, climatologist at Météo France Grand Ouest. “In terms of temperatures, this summer of 2022 is in the top 3 of the hottest summers of the last twenty years in Eure-et-Loir. That’s a lot. We are at the level of the summer of 1976.
In second place, very precisely, in the last sixty years, if we compare the maximum summer temperature with the seasonal average.
1 / Temperatures: often very hot, rarely torrid
Between June and August this value exceeded the seasonal average by 2.8 °, three lengths from the “summer of heat” of 2003, (+ 3.1 °) but earlier than the famous summer of 1976, which remains in the memory (+2.7 °).
Compared to other territories such as the south-east, crushed by “heat bubbles” above 40 °, Eure-et-Loir was quite spared from these very high temperature peaks. More than its intensity, it is the persistence of the phenomenon that classifies the vintage just ended in the category of humid and suffocating summers, as evidenced by the readings made by Météo France.
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From June 1 to September 5, on a balance of 97 days, maximum temperatures were above seasonal norms for 80 days.
Thermal density, therefore, during this very hot summer – one more – which requires the observation of global warming which accredits the evolution of the data. “It’s a fact,” Franck Baraer observes. “Over the past thirty years there have been increasingly hot summers. Which doesn’t mean there won’t be colder summers. “
As in 2021, for example, when maximum temperatures dropped almost one degree in Eure-et-Loir, compared to the seasonal average. Or even in 2007, where this outlay was close to 2nd.
2 / Sun: ten hours a day under the rays
Who says that the heat supposes a long period of sunshine. Between the months of June and August, the cumulative amount of sunshine in Eure-et-Loir was between 850 and 900 hours, or a daily average of about ten hours. The excess of sunshine in the department, compared to seasonal norms, is between 20 and 30%.
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3 / Precipitation: an oasis of freshness in the middle of the desert
A hot summer doesn’t necessarily mean a dry summer. Although the 2022 vintage is one of the top three hottest summers in recent years, it hasn’t been the least humid. Quite the contrary, indeed, with an accumulation of precipitation over three months (June, July, August) rather included in the seasonal average. However, summer visitors and locals alike remember it. The months of August, and even more so in July, were clearly lacking in Eure-et-Loir, with total rainfall less than half or more than the average of previous years.
Water restrictions in Eure-et-Loir: the prefect invites the population to “continue the efforts that are starting to bear fruit”
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“Luckily there was the month of June”, analyzes Franck Baraer, “with twice as much rain as normal. This is undoubtedly what saved the wheat crop. Without the accumulation recorded in June, it would have been negative. “
An oasis of freshness this June, in a context of general rain deficit, which affects the department since the beginning of winter 2021-2022, but to a lesser extent than the winter deficit recorded in some neighboring regions such as Brittany.
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In this warming Eure-et-Loir department, this month was, in light of increasingly rare temperate summers, the exception.
Sebastian Couratin
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