The first snowflakes in Paris and the north of France

The snow will continue to fall this weekend in France. A first depression with snow evacuated this Friday in the east of the country (where it caused a lot of damage), leaving behind accumulations unseen for ten years. A second arrives on Saturday morning from the west. Météo France thus classified 32 departments, including those of Ile-de-France, up to Sunday 6 a.m., in snow and ice orange vigilance.

These are Pas-de-Calais, Nord, Ardennes, Meuse, Marne, Haute-Marne, Yonne, Côte-d’Or, Saône-et- Loire, Rhône, Seine-Maritime, Eure, Aube, Nièvre, Corrèze, Somme, Aisne, Allier, Ain, Loire, Puy-de-Dôme, Cantal, Haute-Loire, Oise, Paris, Seine-et-Marne, Yvelines, Essonne, Hauts-de-Seine, Seine- Saint-Denis, Val-de-Marne and Val-d’Oise.

In Ile-de-France, the announced accumulations are 1 cm to 5 cm, locally 8 cm to 10 cm. Further east, a few more centimeters could whiten the soil with locally around ten centimeters.

Over the eastern regions, the episode will begin in the middle of the afternoon and continue into the first part of the night. 5 to 10 cm are expected, a freezing episode is also possible during the night in these regions.

On the Rhône and the Loire, the snowfall will give a few centimeters in the first part of the night.

In the west of the Massif Central, an episode of marked freezing rain is expected in the first part of the night. It is the Corrèze department that is the most exposed, particularly at altitudes above 400 m.

If the accumulation of flakes should not exceed 5 cm in places, it still generated some traffic difficulties on the A13, west of Paris. Since settled.

In the afternoon, the snow will deepen on contact with the increasingly cold air, especially north of the Seine. Hauts-de-France, Ile-de-France and eastern Center-Val-de-Loire are under snow at the start of the afternoon. The Ile-de-France plateaus whiten with 1 to 5 cm but the snow does not hold in the capital. In the second part of the afternoon, the snow gained the Champagne-Ardennes and the west of Burgundy and immediately held to the ground. It falls 8 to 10 cm in the north of the Champagne-Ardennes by the evening 5 to 8 cm from the Nièvre to the south of the Champagn-Ardennes. In Ile de France and Hauts-de-France, rain replaces snow.

In the evening, it will snow from the north of Auvergne and Burgundy to Lorraine and give 4 to 8 cm on the ground.

During the night, the continuous and sometimes moderate snowfall will shift towards Alsace, Franche-Comté and the Northern Alps and will weaken in Lorraine and the Massif Central.

On Sunday, light snowfall will persist in the morning from Alsace to the Massif Central before being limited in the afternoon between Alsace, the Northern Alps and the Jura.

We expect during this episode new accumulations of 5 to 15 cm in the North-East and 20 to 30 cm in the Vosges terrain, the Haut-Doubs and to a lesser degree in the Haut-Jura and the east of the two savoys.

This weak and sticky snow will have difficulty holding on to the ground in the heart of the Parisian agglomeration, but will hold up on the first peripheral plateaus. It will hold up more easily when approaching Seine-et-Marne, where temperatures are lower. The rain will replace the snow by the west in the second part of the afternoon.

The Roads Department announced this afternoon that it had treated 1,300 km of national roads and highways in recent hours in the region. The Dirif also invites motorists to be careful, recalling in particular that you must not overtake salting machines during operations.

For its part, the Paris Police Prefecture calls for caution this Saturday. The PP indeed advises to « remain attentive to the messages disseminated by the authorities » and to keep informed of the evolution of the situation.

It should be noted that level 2 of the Snow and Ice Plan in the region has been activated, which implies in particular « preventive treatment of the roadways ». Despite the snow removal and road salting measures, the PP warns that transport conditions could « deteriorate very quickly ».

In recent days, many departments of the Grand Est region were placed on orange alert after a « remarkable snowfall » which caused major disturbances of TER in Alsace and power cuts in the Haut-Rhin. Nothing like this to be expected in Île-de-France.

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Gabriel MIHAI

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