On the 10th day, the heatwave is finally ebbing away but the fire risk is still high.

It took 10 days, almost as many tropical nights , and increasingly frequent overshoots of the 40°C mark (266 stations recorded the mark, more than in the second half of the 20th century). The heatwave that began on Monday, August 8th is definitely receding this Sunday, with a total of 25 departments under orange alert, compared to 54 this Saturday.

It is now focusing on the southwest, the Atlantic coast, and the Mediterranean rim, where temperatures of up to 37 degrees will be recorded in Languedoc, and even 40 and 41 degrees in Roussillon and in the heart of the cities of Perpignan and Montpellier. The orange alert was lifted at 6 a.m. in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes and Brittany, Corsica, and the Hautes-Alpes, Météo France said. Pays-de-la-Loire, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, and Lot are expected to follow suit at 10 p.m., according to the institute, which does not forecast temperatures above 31 degrees in the center and north.

The heat that persists in the south is accompanied by a still high risk of fire, warns Météo-France, which points out that the fire alert is at red in six departments, from the Pyrénées-Orientales to Vaucluse, and in particular in Aude, which has been ravaged by a gigantic fire since August 5.

An "extreme risk of forest fires" was declared on Sunday by the prefecture and firefighters, a first in the department since 2016. The result is a combination of heat, with peaks of 39°C, a rise in the tramontane wind, which could bring gusts of 60 km/h, and drought, conducive to the spread of flames in an area where brush clearing and vineyards have not fulfilled their expected role as firebreaks.

"The conditions are not good […] we will be at the maximum level of six out of six ": extreme risk," the Aude firefighters told AFP, planning "a great deal of surveillance, beyond anything we have ever experienced."

A total of 1,200 firefighters are "on alert" in the department, according to the prefecture, including 330 still mobilized to monitor the fire which started between the communes of Ribaute and Lagrasse and which has still not been extinguished.