Storms were expected, they were spectacular. The Alpes-Maritimes were hit late Monday afternoon by a storm cell which caused significant rainfall and a sudden drop in temperatures.
The storm which broke out around 5 p.m. was notably marked by heavy hail. Several districts of the city of Nice found themselves under a blanket of ice.
A few kilometers further west on the Côte d’Azur, Cagnes-sur-Mer, experienced a similar situation. This video shows the road conditions that drivers had to deal with.
The other notable fact of this storm is the spectacular change in temperatures it caused. At the start of the afternoon, it was around fifteen degrees in Nice, according to readings from the Météo France station provided by Infoclimate. At 5 p.m., when the phenomenon began, it was still just over 11°C. A few minutes later, it was only 4.4°C.
A first in 73 years
This site graphic Weather sky allows you to visualize how rapid the change was. As night fell, the temperature barely rose afterwards.
This map from Monday at 5:48 p.m. shows to what extent the Alpes-Maritimes experienced a completely different situation from the rest of the French regions bordering the Mediterranean. It was around fifteen degrees everywhere else.
Gaétan Heymes, Météo France forecaster, underlines the exceptional nature of the situation. With 4.4°C when the storm passed, Nice was then the French city located in the plain to experience the coolest temperature. It was the first time in 73 years that it had been so cold this late in April. In 1951, the temperature dropped to 3.8°C on April 30.
On April 21, 1954, it was 3.5°C, but that was a day earlier in the calendar than April 22, 2024. At the beginning of April, it was already cooler than Monday. It was April 2, 2022. The temperature had then dropped to 3.8°C, “which remains the lowest in the last forty years in April,” explains Gaétan Heymes.
This Tuesday, other storms could affect the Alpes-Maritimes. “It is particularly between the south of the Alps and the west of Corsica that the most active stormy showers are expected,” according to Keraunos.
The French observatory for tornadoes and violent storms does not rule out the formation of a “vortex phenomenon”. These possible tubas (a tornado emerging from a cloud but which does not touch land) and waterspouts (a tornado at sea), should a priori remain offshore.
