Weather tracker: Southern France under yellow alert after severe thunderstorms | France
Severe storms affected parts of southern France on Monday, March 9; Many regions such as Hérault, Var and Alpes-Maritimes are on yellow alert due to heavy rain.
Some of the heaviest rainfall came from a cell that passed over the Var section. Examples of high rainfall totals from some private weather stations come from the towns of Carqueiranne and Saint-Mandrier-sur-Mer; here 104.4 mm in seven and a half hours and 92.7 mm in three hours were recorded respectively. However, since these are private meteorological stations, they may contain measurement errors.
The official Hyères weather station recorded 113.7 mm in 24 hours, indicating that these values are reliable. This marks a new record for the station, surpassing the previous daily record of 84.1 mm set in March in 1988.
Additionally, due to heavy rainfall, the Gapeau river in Var overflowed. The river reached a height of 2.34 m, close to the 2.66 m seen in the November 2011 flood, and as a result the flooding continued for the next few days.
The United States witnessed several days of severe convective storms, including heavy rain, tornadoes, and large hail. As a result, the state of Illinois may set a new hail size record. Six inches of hail was reported Tuesday by a resident of the City of Kankakee, which if confirmed would set a new state record. The previous state record was 4.75 inches in the village of Miniooka in June 2015. There have been other reports of hailstones exceeding this diameter, so a new record will likely be made official soon.
The persistent high pressure area caused record-breaking temperatures in the Namakwa region and the Western Cape in South Africa, with many weather stations shattering all-time March temperature records. The strong anticyclone resulted in the formation of a “heat dome” in which air descending below this high-pressure area was continually compressed and heated over the course of days; This resulted in very dry and hot conditions. Notable new March temperature records include a reading of 42.1C recorded in the City of Cape Town; This is 2C warmer than the previous record of 39.8C, set in March 2015.
