France is on track to experience its driest July on record, the national weather service Meteo France said Wednesday, with drought-like conditions leading to increasingly severe water restrictions around the country.
"The month of July will very likely be the driest July ever recorded since 1959," Christian Veil from Meteo France said.
On average, just eight millimetres of rain fell across the country from 1 to 25 July, less than the previous low of 16 millimetres which was clocked in 2020, he said.
"We're in a very difficult situation even though we're only at the end of July," he said, saying soil humidity was at record lows and many trees were losing their leaves prematurely.
💧 ❌ A quelques jours de la fin juillet, le cumul mensuel de précipitations à l'échelle de la France est le plus bas jamais mesuré depuis 1959.#Sécheresse des sols particulièrement élevée sur de très nombreuses régions. pic.twitter.com/kqgDrIfE0x
— Météo-France (@meteofrance) July 27, 2022
Farmers across the country are reporting difficulties in feeding livestock because of parched grasslands, while irrigation has been banned in large areas of northwest and southeast France due to water shortages.
The flow of the river Loire for example, which empties into the Atlantic in northwest France, has fallen by a quarter since the start of July.
On the eastern river Rhine, which forms the France-Germany border, commercial boats are having to run at a third of their carrying capacity in order to avoid hitting the bottom because the water level is so low.
A total of 90 out of 96 administrative regions in mainland France have water restrictions of some sort, a record number, according to the environment ministry.
Only a handful of "departments" around the country are exempt from the restrictions, including the Paris area, the government's drought website Propluvia shows.
Two severe heatwaves in May and latterly in July - when temperatures soared above 40 Celsius - have further reduced water levels while searing farmland and forests.
Two huge blazes near Bordeaux in southwest France over the last fortnight have destroyed more than 20,000 hectares of tinder-dry forest and required around 2,000 firefighters to bring them under control.
(with newswires)
