Météo-France in the storm after the storms in Corsica – Le Monde

The Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, next to a damaged bungalow in the La Pinède campsite, in Calvi, on August 19, 2022, the day after violent storms which left five dead and around twenty injured. EMMANUEL DUNAND / AFP After the violent storms that hit Corsica, causing at least five deaths, it was Météo-France that found itself at the heart of the storm. On social networks, on television sets, the organization is the target of criticism and ridicule, accused of having been guilty of a “big failure”, by giving the alert too late. From Calvi (Haute-Corse), the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, announced on Friday August 19 the forthcoming opening of an investigation, with the civil security services, to take stock of what is not didn’t work. “The weather alert did not qualify as necessary these absolutely exceptional winds which formed in a few minutes, commented severely on Mr. Darmanin, seeming to reject the responsibility on the only meteorological organization. What we see at the Ministry of the Interior is that the weather alert arrived a few minutes before the worst of the bad weather. So at 8 o’clock in the morning, an evacuation of the campsites was not physically possible. Thursday, August 18, in its 6 o’clock bulletin, Météo-France placed Corsica only in simple yellow vigilance (“be attentive”), like a good part of the territory. Forecasters then only anticipated “powerful storms (…), at sea near Corsica, with strong gusts of wind”, which could “very temporarily affect the west and north coasts”. The orange alert (“be very vigilant”) was only activated at 8:30 a.m., after the arrival of the storm on the land with tornado phenomena. However, it was between 8:15 a.m. and 9:15 a.m. that the storm was the most violent, with gusts measured up to 224 kilometers per hour, levels never observed so far. The latest information: Corsica, still on orange alert, is experiencing a “relative calm” after a very strong storm “Thunderstorms remain the most difficult episodes to predict” Météo-France acknowledges having been “surprised” by an “exceptional” situation and “difficult to predict” by its numerical models. Some simulations produced by “Arome”, the in-house model of Météo-France which runs on its supercomputer in Toulouse, “suggested a storm close to the one observed”, while other simulations “which seemed more likely, the located more at sea,” said forecaster François Gourand, during a press briefing. “If we had to alert as soon as an extreme scenario appears in the numerical forecast, we would be far too vigilant and the system would become useless”, judges his colleague Christophe Morel. There is a balance to be found, alert enough and not over-alert. “In the case of Corsica, he believes that there were” not enough elements “to go to orange alert. You have 59.53% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.