Weather. The eleven-day heatwave is over, and storms are coming.

It will have lasted eleven days: the heatwave ended this Tuesday morning, Météo-France having lifted the latest orange alerts in its 6 a.m. bulletin. Along the Mediterranean coast, the departments of Pyrénées-Orientales, Aude, Hérault, Gard, Bouches-du-Rhône, Var and Vaucluse have been downgraded to yellow alert.

Initially confined to the South, with particularly high temperatures in the Mediterranean South, the heat reached an exceptional level between Monday and Wednesday last week from the southwest to the center-east, where many records were broken.

This Tuesday, a stormy weather pattern will spread across a large southeastern quarter of the country between the Massif Central and the Alps, before spreading towards Burgundy-Franche-Comté by the end of the day. These storms will be accompanied by gusts of wind, hail, and significant accumulations of precipitation, Météo-France predicts. Temperatures will record "a marked drop across the entire country."

"A rainstorm episode is developing from the southwest to the center-east as well as in the Mediterranean regions," Météo-France warned in its bulletin, predicting "expected rainfall accumulations (which) could locally be significant in a short period of time."

The heatwave, which began on August 8, was exceptional in its duration and intensity . In the Southwest, it was comparable to that of August 2003. Many temperature records for the month of August were broken, such as on August 13 in Bourg-Saint-Maurice (Savoie) with 38.2°C or in Saint-Yan (Saône-et-Loire) with 40.4°C. Unprecedented values for all months combined were also recorded on numerous occasions, such as on August 12 in Saint-Laurent-du-Pape (Ardèche) with 42.9°C or in Romans-sur-Isère (Drôme) with 42.6°C.

In France, 266 weather stations recorded a temperature of 40°C or higher at least once between August 9 and 12 inclusive. This is more than in the entire second half of the 20th century (235). In Carcassonne (Aude), the temperature even approached or exceeded 40°C every day for a week! On Saturday, it was still up to 40.2°C around 4 p.m., two degrees lower than the 42.4°C recorded on Monday and Tuesday. In the neighboring department of Hérault, it was the minimum nighttime temperature that stunned: during the night from Friday to Saturday, it did not fall below 30 degrees in Sète, on the Mediterranean coast!

The heatwave has also put pressure on health services, with an increase in emergency room visits recorded since August 8. What is the mortality rate? It's too early to say, but during the 16-day heatwave in June, Public Health France recorded 480 deaths "in excess" of the normal rate.