The situation promises to be complicated for spectators, but especially for runners, on the road to the Tour de France this Sunday. The weather conditions could be bad enough even if a more positive scenario is not completely excluded.
Difficult to affirm with accuracy what time it will make in the passage of cycling champions. It is a question of reasoning in terms of probabilities. And this Sunday morning, the majority scenario that emerges is that of precipitation during the passage of the race in the capital, on the slopes of Montmartre, rue Lepic and on the Champs-Élysées.
After the northern bruine, the sky cleared in Paris on Sunday. But the situation will be complicated from the beginning of the afternoon. “The showers are more frequent and sometimes take on a stormy character,” warns Météo France. The meteorological organization has indeed placed the Île-de-France in yellow vigilance (level 2 of 4) due to thunderstorms. If it is located on the sidelines of the most exposed area, which mainly concerns the Grand Est region and northern Burgundy, it is nevertheless under surveillance.
In the vigilance regions, Keraunos, the French observatory of tornadoes and violent thunderstorms, evokes “thunderstorms, dispersed and generally short”. They “can locally be active, with heavy rain, hail and gusts close to 70 km/h”. But there too, the capital region would be on the fringes of the most violent phenomena.
The time slot 4 p.m. – 7 p.m. the most exposed
The same goes for the risk of “whirlwind phenomenon”, that is to say tornado. If such an event occurred it should be “weak” and it is Burgundy, Champagne, Lorraine and Alsace that would be exhibited, Parisian town planning not being conducive to the formation of tornado.
This Sunday afternoon and at the end of the day, the most exposed time slot in Paris extends from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m., whether it is rain or thunderstorm, as these animations provided by the weather channel show. The accumulation of precipitation should not be too large, but sufficient to cause concerns to the participants in the race. The specialized media considers that the probability of rain will increase over the hours. After a zero risk until lunch, it drops to 65 % in the afternoon and then 85 % for the end of the day and the evening.
The departure of the last stage of the Tour will be given at 4:25 p.m. from Mantes-la-Ville, in the Yvelines. The theoretical arrival is scheduled for 7:35 p.m. The three passages by Montmartre and its cobblestones must take place there too in theory, from 6.30 p.m. and until a few minutes before the end of the stage. The peloton could therefore be exposed to bad weather and wet soil to the end.
Most meteorological models converge on quasi-certainty that the rain will be there at the time of the Tour. This is as well the case of French aroma, as for the American GFS or the German Icon, which has been quite efficient these money days despite a very unstable atmospheric situation. However, everyone also agrees to confirm that Île-de-France is on the sidelines of the part of the country which will experience bad weather, which leaves a small hope that the impact of drops will be limited to Paris.
In any case, the course of the last stage of the Tour de France will not be truncated. But due to the dangers linked to the cobblestones and a few narrow turns, the organizers have long spared an exit door. “We have a protocol to freeze times. The stage takes place, but the times are frozen, “said Thierry Gouvenou, race director before the Tour departure.
To remove pressure from runners, the chronometer could be frozen at any time. In 2015, he was arrested in the first passage on the Champs-Élysées.