Tuesday forecast: Rain returns to northwestern France as temperatures fall sharply

Rain is returning to northwestern France on Tuesday, while the east and southeast hold on to sunshine and high heat before the atmosphere turns heavy and stormy later in the day.

The disturbance will affect Brittany and Cotentin in the morning before spreading across the northwest during the afternoon. Rain will reach northern Nouvelle-Aquitaine, Centre-Val de Loire, Île-de-France, Haute-Normandie and Hauts-de-France, according to La Chaîne Météo’s latest bulletin. Areas close to the English Channel will receive the most rain, with totals generally between 10 and 20 millimeters and locally as much as 25 millimeters.

The rain should help ease dry soil conditions, but amounts will be lower from the Pays de la Loire to Belgium via Île-de-France. Those areas are expected to receive 3 to 8 millimeters, with local totals of up to 10 millimeters.

After a hot day, the atmosphere will become unstable from the Pyrenees to France’s eastern borders on Tuesday evening and overnight into Wednesday. Storms could break out in parts of Occitanie, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, Franche-Comté and southern Alsace. They may bring intense rainfall, localized hail and strong wind gusts.

France will sit between very warm air moving north from the Mediterranean and cooler air arriving from the Atlantic. The contrast will be visible in temperatures: 18°C in Brest and Rouen, 21°C in Nantes, 31°C in Besançon, 33°C in Strasbourg and 36°C in Lyon. Sunshine will also vary sharply, with little sun across much of the northwest but generous sunshine in the southeast ahead of the disturbance.