Thunderstorms and rain once again swept over France.
The violent summer storms which crossed part of the country on Wednesday without causing major damage were however spectacular in Lyon and Saint-Étienne, and again affected the Mediterranean arc in the evening.
During the night from Wednesday to Thursday, only one department remained on orange alert for a risk of rain-flooding after strong thunderstorms, the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, according to Météo France.
Vaucluse, Gard, Bouches-du-Rhône and Var are no longer on orange alert.
Read alsoWhy are the storms that hit France so violent?
In the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Rhône-Alpes region, placed on orange vigilance earlier in the day, rain and hailstones hit the north of Saint-Étienne on Wednesday afternoon, causing traffic difficulties for cars and trains, with several tens of centimeters of water or hail accumulated in certain sectors.
On the images of Internet users, we can see heavy rains flooding the roads, trees knocked down by gusts of wind or a blanket of hail covering gardens.
Wind gusts of more than 130 km / h were recorded by Météo France and several buildings saw part of their roofs fly off, Lieutenant-Colonel Florence Rabat, from Sdis 42, told AFP. Lyon suffered flooding, particularly in the municipalities of Feyzin, where the chemical valley is located, and Saint-Germain-Laval.
Thunderstorms and precipitation but no "significant damage"
In the Mediterranean arc, already affected by summer thunderstorms overnight from Tuesday to Wednesday, Hérault again experienced thunderstorms in the early evening, according to AFP journalists.
A cumulative rain of 123 mm was recorded in Lauroux, a village about sixty kilometers from Montpellier, said Météo France.
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Torrents, hail, floods: images of the violent storms that hit the Var and the Bouches-du-Rhône
The stormy line then shifted towards Nîmes then Arles (Bouches-du-Rhône), further east, but without causing any significant disturbances.
Around 9:30 p.m., the Gard firefighters assured AFP that the storm had "passed" and that no significant damage had been reported.
The Vaucluse firefighters, for their part, received many calls in the evening from the Cavaillon sector, "for falling trees and water infiltration in houses".
In Marseille, lightning streaked the sky and the rain fell in a sustained manner around 9:30 p.m., with 35 mm of rain in less than 45 minutes, as well as in other parts of the department, “but no particular or notable interventions “, said the firefighters.
In the evening, torrents of water were noted in certain districts, as well as in Cassis, according to the newspaper La Provence, but without causing significant damage.
In the South-East, Météo France predicts that “thunderstorms still occur in the second part of the night, in particular towards the coastal areas of the Var”, but “less strong than the previous ones”.
Threats to farms 15 days before harvest
Storms caused damage in the north of the Gers where crops, already affected by heavy hail in June, were again damaged overnight from Tuesday to Wednesday.
"I feel angry, frustrated, because we are 15 days away from harvest," laments Philippe Larrey, farmer in Montreal-du-Gers.
“On plots of vines, I lost 100% of the harvest.
We will not harvest them, and the wood is so bruised that the next harvest is already in jeopardy,” he continues.
Gers firefighters had to intervene more than 150 times, four patients from a retirement home in Condom had to be evacuated, the building having been damaged.
On the Normandy coast and Pas-de-Calais, after heavy rains which settled down at the end of the afternoon, around forty houses were flooded, particularly in the neighboring towns of Montreuil-sur-Mer and Boulogne- sur-Mer in Pas-de-Calais.
A supermarket was evacuated in La Gorgue (North).
There were no injuries or exceptional damage, according to the firefighters.
Meteo France expects showers in the Basque Country which "reinforce at the very beginning of the day on Thursday, taking on a stormy character".
"A relative calm is emerging in the middle of the day, before a tendency to a new reinforcement of the showers, in particular on the coastal area", estimates the meteorological organization.