From the Charente to the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, the agricultural southwest of France appeared this Sunday morning particularly affected by the damage due to frost on the young shoots, but the whole agricultural sector still feared two “difficult” nights to come in France.
"The episode of frost overnight from Saturday to Sunday particularly affected the Garonne valley, the Charentes, the Dordogne, as far as the Pyrénées-Atlantiques with temperatures which fell to -2 and -3 degrees", a reported Jérôme Despey, Deputy Secretary General of the FNSEA.
Read also“There is a risk of breakage”: after the snow, frost now threatens crops
In this region of the South-West, the stone fruit trees but also the apple trees whose vegetation had just started to emerge were affected, as well as, in the vines, the earliest grape varieties in the region "such as Chardonnay, Cabernet or Merlot," he said.
"The damage has not all been identified yet," said Jérôme Despey, himself a winegrower in the Hérault.
And “we fear the worst for crops, including further south when the wind has died down, over the next two nights, Sunday to Monday and Monday to Tuesday,” he added.
In Bergerac (Dordogne), where the thermometer fell to -5.1 degrees overnight from Saturday to Sunday, a record for the month of April, Éric Chadourne, winegrower and president of the Bergerac and Duras wine interprofession was struck by the duration of the frost: "three or four hours" between -3 and -5 degrees overnight from Saturday to Sunday.
"There will be breakage", predicts this winegrower who started his wind turbine at 10:30 p.m. on Saturday to stir the air around his vines, and thus try to prevent the frost from destroying the young shoots that have just appeared.
"The Garonne valley was particularly affected overnight from Saturday to Sunday and we recorded many falling temperature records," confirms Tristan Amm, forecaster at Météo France.
Some of the organization's stations in the West and the South "have broken their cold record for April", indicates a tweet, with sometimes marked frosts.
This Sunday in the middle of the morning, there was no longer any department on orange “snow-ice” vigilance.
🥶🌡️ This #Sunday morning, the sometimes clear sky this night caused a marked night cooling.
Some stations in the west and south broke their #cold record for #April, #frosts sometimes marked.
📸Eyzies-de-Tayac-Sireuil (24)
📲Obs-Appli Météo-France
⬇️⬇️ pic.twitter.com/78DWL4rxNR
— Meteo-France (@meteofrance) April 3, 2022
On average, in France, the temperatures on Sunday were 6 degrees below the average for the season, according to the organization.
A wave of polar air will favor night frosts, especially when the sky is clear on Monday and Tuesday, indicates Météo France, which again forecasts "severe frosts" at night from Sunday to Monday, on the same diagonal, from Alsace to the Pyrenees via the Center-East and the Massif Central.
During the night from Saturday to Sunday, the thermometer fell to 0.3 degrees in Toulon, a Mediterranean city where the previous cold record for this period dated from 1958 (+ 1.1 degrees).
In Brest, it fell to -2.4 degrees, against -2.3 degrees in 1978. The manager of the RTE electricity network also predicted a tense situation Monday morning, for the same reason, by calling on companies and individuals to curb their electricity consumption, in particular between 7 a.m. and 10 a.m. in particular for household appliances.
Anti-frost towers, wind mixing and sprinkling of the vines
In the wine regions of the center-east of the country such as Chablis, very affected by spring frosts last year, the traditional means of combating frost have been activated such as anti-frost towers, wind mixing and sprinkling of the vines, to "try to avoid tragedies such as we already experienced last year", he detailed.
On the agricultural side, in the Tarn-et-Garonne, Pierre Bonnet, arborist from the north of the department spent a sleepless night on Saturday with temperatures dropping to -4 degrees on his land.
“The difference with last year is that this temperature is the same in the bottom of the fields as on the hillsides,” he told AFP, fearing for the early varieties of plums.
In the same department, Béatrice Lamanerie, an arborist in Lizac, launched sprinkling on her trees at midnight, a technique “based on watering”: The fruits gain an envelope of ice which protects them.
Still in the South-West, the Saint-Emilion vineyard was also affected, "but there will not be the same damage" as last year, the vines being less advanced than last year, hopes Jean- François Galhaud, president of the Saint-Emilion wine council.
Same hope in Chablis, where Stéphane Aufrère, based in Fleys, hopes that the buds, a little later than last year, will resist the cold.
He has already spent the last night "warming up" what he can and "preparing for the coming night".
"We heat two hectares out of twenty" using large candles distributed between the rows of vines to prevent the cold from seizing the plants.
"We have neither the means nor the staff to protect all our vines," he told AFP.
In the Rhone Valley too we are preparing.
"There hasn't been too much damage so far but they are predicting more cold weather for the nights to come, it looks complicated until Wednesday," notes Elodie Merlin, who operates 3 ha of apricot trees in Bourg-les-Valence (Drôme).
The frost has already caused him to lose the harvest of three varieties in recent weeks.
Her husband sleeps there to watch over the orchards: "You have to watch all night, the alarms ring all the time...".
In 2021, an early spring leading to the start of budding of the vegetation (the "budburst" in the vines) was followed by an episode of frost from April 3 to 10, causing a lot of damage in the vines in particular.
An exceptional envelope of one billion euros had been made available by the government, in particular for arborists and winegrowers who had lost all or part of their harvest for the year, as well as for certain cereal producers.