As we all know. It’s just weather ~cr
France declares ‘calamité agricole’ after record cold: What is it?
The emergency support comes after freezing weather caused significant damage to crops
9 April 2021
The government has acknowledged the damage that many farmers had suffered to their crops as a result of the freezing weather.
By Hannah Thompson
Farmers across France will receive government support after the agriculture minister acknowledged the damage the cold had wreaked on crops; with the cold snap set to continue across the country.
Minister of Agriculture Julien Denormandie confirmed a state of “calamité agricole” – or farming disaster – yesterday (April 8), to acknowledge the damage that many farmers had suffered to their crops as a result of the freezing weather.
He told FranceInfo: “[We confirm] the implementation of what we call the calamité agricole scheme
What does that mean?
Normally, a calamité agricole is uninsurable.
But the government recognition and official definition of the situation means that it has committed to providing financial aid as compensation to the farmers and producers affected, as well as ensuring that insurers and banks will also cooperate.
Those affected will now also have access to compensation from the national agriculture risk fund, le Fonds national de gestion des risques en agriculture (FNGRA).
An official calamité agricole must be recognised by authorities before funds from insurers and other sources can be released.
In France, the situation is most often declared due to drought, but this time it has been confirmed due to unseasonably cold temperatures, especially at night.
Mr Denormandie also said that the government had called on insurance companies to confirm their cooperation and support, as well as bankers and lenders.
He said: “We are organising a total emergency response so that support measures can be put in place as quickly as possible to ensure that no one is left behind.”
The article discusses the procedures and accounting of government aid to agriculture and includes this stark warning.
Mr Denormandie also said: “Unfortunately, we are expecting new freezes in the next few days to which we will be paying great attention, so the bill could rise. The situation is already very difficult.”
What temperatures are we talking about?
From Monday April 5, temperatures in some areas of France dropped suddenly to around 7C below the usual average.
Wednesday April 7 was one of the coldest April days since 1930.
Read the full article is here.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Coldest February in 30 years, April 9 freeze in France, when do we go back to predicting an upcoming ice age?
My feet are cold, plus there is snow predicted for 5 out of the next six days and the ski season is supposed to end this week. Not sure about an ice age, but it’s definitely cooler than usual for the date.
We’ve been living in south Burgundy for the last 11 years. The current overnight temperatures are certainly, by a fair margin, the lowest March/April temps in that time and the forecast is for more of the same for the rest of this week.
Neighbours agree that there has been nothing comparable in their lifetime in terms of the lateness of the frosts. And their lifetime in some cases goes back to the 1930s!
It is, of course, only weather but about time our climastrologists accepted that tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, droughts and heatwaves are also “only weather” and their pseudo-scientific attempts to change civilisation by claiming these events have some deeper significance are simply wrong — to put it politely!
Newminster, please tell us if the wine grapes were/are affected? The suspense is getting to me. Thanks.
Sorry but the facts don’t support your anecdotal stories.
Do you, or your neighbours not remember the severe frost at the end of April 2016? After a mild winter, there were severe black frosts recorded at the end of April, with temperatures dropping to -3.5 ° C, the buds roasted. Those of the vines of course, but also of the fruit trees, in particular the cherry trees.
2017, the same thing, in the northern part of the Chablis vineyard around the communes of Maligny, Beine, and Ligny-le-Chatel, the frost caused significant damage and the temperatures dropped to -5°C in some exposed areas.
14th April 2019 Chateau Favray, Saint-Martin-sur-Nohain, -4/-5°C.
April frosts in these regions are by no means rare, or a thing of the past.
You are perfectly correct in saying that small areas have been affected in past years. However this is the first time I can remember it being so widespread across larger areas. Also the first time it has been so severe that the French are treating it as a farming disaster. It’s not that it’s happened before but the scale hasn’t been seen in our lifetimes.
Several times in the past 10 years a sinistre ou catastrophe naturel has been declared due to frost or hail.
“However this is the first time I can remember it being so widespread across larger areas.”
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to minimise the disaster, it’s a bad one, maybe one of the worst considering the state of the economy, we’ll have to wait and see. I follow these extreme episodes in France and keep records rather than relying on memory.
The extreme frosts between the 17th and the 21st of April 2017 touched 52% of the territory. That’s pretty widespread.
“Also the first time it has been so severe that the French are treating it as a farming disaster.”
Again, as Stephen points out below that’s not true. The “Le régime des calamités agricoles” is most often used after major heatwaves destroy crops, but frost and flooding are also included. It was used last October to help after the terrible floods in the Alps-Maritimes. It’s been around since the sixties and has been used many times to help viticulteurs and arboriculteurs alike after natural disasters.
This is also Macron trying to score political points with already angry farmers, but I won’t go into that.
Some of the temperatures recorded during that late April period 2017
Late March, april heavy frosts are, in my anecdotal memory, common. We pften drive to the alps for easter and temperatures of -5 to -7 are not a surprise. The bloomin wine producers have a laugh too – the dramtically reduced crop often leads to a better vintage – less work for bigger profit margin.
I live a few kms from Bordeaux. We have had snow in april and frost for the last 2 years. We lost our potato crop last year and the year before but left to themselves they recovered by summer. Frost, hail etc are not uncommon in all the wine regions frombordeaux to bergerac to bourgogne and champagne. In the est they wait for the first frost to pick their premier cru white.
Thanks for the report. Very damaging frost here in the US mid-Appalachians last mid-May. Fortunately the farmers here in the local area know not to plant vulnerable crops until third week of May.
Glaciation is not starting this year. Tropical Atlantic has just nudged the 30C control limit west of Africa – a bit later than previous years but bodes well for boreal summer warming.
Open ocean surface at 30C is in energy balance. It develops sufficient cloud to limit surface insolation to just enough to balance the cooling from precipitation. If North Atlantic basin does not get to 30C in any year then that will be an early indicator of energy deficiency.
Did you just write two paragraphs to say that if it gets warmer, it will have warmed, and if it is colder, is means there is cooling?
More to the point, what pretzel-twisting “explanation” will result in the predicted cooling STILL being the fault of fossil fuel use?
If the result of their proposed “policies” to “fight” what is purely natural weren’t so dire, the whole charade would actually be funny.
They’ve had the explanation out there for years; warmer makes it colder.
And Oceania has has always been at war with Eurasia…
Aren’t those the lyrics to a song:
;”Whatever makes you warmer makes you colder” ?
“CLIMATE CHANGE, COVID-19, AND THE GREAT RESET”
https://electroverse.net/climate-change-covid-19-and-the-great-reset/
It saddens me to see this cooling happening, as we predicted in 2002 – it’s like watching a slow-motion train wreck that we tried to warn people about, and nobody would listen. I’ve always been a builder, and to watch the global warming climate fraudsters repeatedly delude idiot politicians and the public has been a depressing debacle. Trillions of dollars of scarce global resources have been squandered on warmist frauds, as our society sleepwalked towards climate-and-green-energy disaster.
I have repeatedly stated that our idiot politicians have brewed the perfect storm,
destabilizing the electrical grid with intermittent green energy nonsense at a time when we will need more abundant, reliable energy due to imminent global cooling. I still hope this cooling will be mild and short-lived, but I have no strong opinion, having not done the work to try to quantify it. Let’s hope it is no worse than the Dalton Minimum, and not like the Maunder.
This has EVERYTHING to do with AGW! and ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with global cooling, because there is a HOLY CONSENSUS on the subject, you pagan unbelieving infidels! you apostates! you deserving of intifada!
This cold weather is proof that the fight against fossil fuels is working.
🤣,😂,🤣
Don’t laugh, this will be the next argument of the Warmunists if cooling turns out to be real.
Just need to tweak things a bit. Probably just need to raise taxes on cold weather. Maybe a degree day tax on retirement savings.
Just wait until they get the Thames to freeze over again! We’ll all be so much better off. Wonder how cold France was when the Thames froze on a routine basis?
The Thames froze two months ago.
I thought it was proof than people with their heads jammed all the way up inside their own butts, know nothing about what is happening in the world?
SW London hit by global warming, snowing 1C.
Sixty years ago Yuri Gagarin’s completed a single orbit of the Earth.
Correlation isn’t causation, Vuk. 😜
You obviously don’t believe in 60 year cycle.
Just teasing ya.
The way those two lines read it’s as if the single orbit caused the snow 60 years later. I got your point but couldn’t pass up using that line.
I can’t tell if you’re teasing right back at me. I know English isn’t your first language, but I’ve read most all of your comments over the years** and your English is very, very – did I remember to say very? – good now. But now and then, the structure can be a little off.
**Is it 14 or 15 years now you’ve been commenting here? 16 years, maybe?
No, I’m seriously serious, in this case as always is, it is Russians’ fault, this is second time they done it, we had snowing in SW London exactly two months ago, after Boris had a go at Putin about some guy Navalny.
Yes, my corner of Surrey had about an inch of snow this morning.
Predicting upcoming ice-ages, by tea-leafing, astrology, or climate modeling, requires one to show people are irresponsible for it; otherwise you will be burnt as a witch, “fossil fuel shill”, “climate denier”, or all 3.
OOh Burned three times. That’s go to hurt
Clearly, this is the result of Global Warming .. the omnipotent force that can do anything.
I don’t know, but with this recent (last few years) “polar vortex” stuff I’ve been noticing a rather familiar shape to the North American snow & ice coverage.
First time 25 in southern France that I lit the fire in April . Been heating for the last week.
Where’s all that “run away warming” when you need it?
When I signed up for global warming and agreed to burn a lot of hydro carbons I didn’t agree to this. I want my global warming (stamps feet)
It could be worse. In Edmonton they make the churchgoers worship outside.
Eek!!
It’s been a few generations since the population snuggled up to the Gestapo and allowed places of worship to be raided and the congregation jailed or prohibited. Those were the good old days, I guess people really do miss them.
The inmates are running the asylum.
I happen to be a couple of km from the church in question. Today hundreds of people showed up. Some tore down the fence erected by the police, and afterwards, some helped put it back up again. That was interesting.
People are allowed to use the church but at limited capacity. Apparently the preacher is not willing to give his sermon multiple times to satisfy the health officials.
Other churches and mega-churches in the area seem to have no problem with the limitations. They make a simple plan and get on with it.
Really forward thinking champ!
/s
Yeah, that’s the general reaction in all totalitarian systems. The useful idiots and goody-two-shoes come out in droves to assist the storm troopers. Odd, that. It has been found that fewer than ten percent are needed to be hard line Nazis, Communists or Fascists of any stripe. The rest are more than willing to pitch right in and help do the deed. They’ll even turn in anyone who isn’t toeing the line. Totalitarian rule is so easily brought about. Freedom is so fragile.
Most of these so called “health measures” are (possibly) well meant and at least somewhat “scientific” … and in contravention of our freedoms, rights as well as the Nuremberg Code (for medical experiments)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Code
I have no duty of care to you are anyone but my own blood. If you want to distance … feel free … wear a mask … be my guest … or even shoot up experimental drugs … go ahead. But leave me free to do my own thing without guilt. These churches are showing the way. More need to follow.
There’s an Edmonton in London also, in more ways than one….
But UK plod being the mendacious & zombiefied thugs that they are landed in Balham, about 15 miles away
At a Jewish church as well..
Quote: Met Police officers found some worshippers without masks and not socially distancing at Christ the King on Balham High Road, London“”
April 3rd
April 12th
Is that Edmonton, London or Edmonton Alberta?
I have no compassion for you. If you are silly enough to believe in a myth then you are getting what you deserve – no pity from me.
You can save your money, burning hydrocarbons is not going to result in global warming – Although you can burn them to keep you warm providing you have a roof over your head to retain the heat produced. Get in now before they are carbon taxed out of your price range.
Many readers do not require an obvious “sarc”.
But some do.
– – winking smiley face – – Poe’s Law
If it were a heat wave, we would be dismissing it as “just weather”.
It would be intellectually dishonest not to do the same for a cold wave.
If it started happening with some regularity, that would be different.
“We” are not the ones putting forth the CO2 warming conjecture. In hypothesis testing, observations opposite of what is expected point to the hypothesis being falsified.
We have not been the ones always conflating regional weather events of short duration with climatic patterns for the whole world. AGW true believers are doing the projection, not us.
You should be old enough to know that it is “heat waves” and “cold snaps”.
The weather-warming El Ninos of 1998 and 2016 are over.
Temps are now flat-lying for almost twenty years.
I’m sure you meant flat-lining (autocorrect again!
I think I prefer “flat-lying 😂
If you’re going to fix it, do it right, Redge.
It’s flat-out lying temps after all the massaging.
Self massaging probably
In the past, “flat lying” would tell you to watch your fingers or some penchant of yours for carelessness. LATELY, such errors are almost always “auto-correct” especially for “Facebook” postings, AND you must be willing to “correct” the “community (communist) standard” “suggestion” three or four times.
If it started happening with some regularity, that would be different.
Just in case it becomes important later, could you offer a defintion of ‘some regularity’?
Need to take every opportunity to call out this RGHE lunacy. All knowledgeable people should make it their duty to inform the ill-informed.
My most recent work shows how hopeless climate models are at coping with well documented trendless regions like the Nino34 – hard to have a warming trend where there is none. It means the past has to be cooled to absurd degree to produce a current temperature that resembles reality.
Attached shows the efforts of a couple of European climate prognosticators.
RGHE = Radiative Green House Effect
It took more than a simple search to find that out.
Please define your acronyms.
I apologise. I thought is had been used up thread but it was on another thread earlier today.
Children in Tahiti just won’t know what snow is.
Cuba too.
And they thank you for it, i remember being in cuba on a +18C day in february, i was sweating in shorts and all the locals were wearing winter parkas.
Having lived through the St Valentine’s Day freeze and extended blackout in Texas, claims of global warming are even more ridiculous.
If climate change can produce results in either polarity, it is more theology than science. The Devil CO2 did it!!
Early winter temperatures in SE Australia as well
https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/7204160/winter-arrives-early-in-canberra-as-capital-prepares-for-cold-snap/
If only Scott Morrison had appointed more women to senior positions…
only 7C below average? that can’t be right
Yea, saw that too. Maybe they mean 7C below the average low?
I’m beginning to have no sympathy whatsoever. Initially, weather watching, weather prediction and “climatology” was a discipline directed towards agriculture … feeding people. But … modern times managed to convert man’s preoccupation with the weather into a political juggernaut of population control and a cash grab by globalists, progressives and the hard Left. Everyone got their noses in the trough, losing sight of the real purpose of trying to predict the weather … agriculture. Now people are bored by a real crisis … COLD, not a few 100ths of a degree of warmth.
French eco terrorists may have a hard time convincing les gilets jaunes to give up petroleum now.
Interesting to note that I have already seen reports that point out that the real problem isn’t the cold in April, it was the unprecedented warmth in March.
Of course, up is down, hot is cold, I forgot. They just can’t help themselves.
Ironically, many farmers planted early to try and avoid possible heatwave problems later on in the year. Farming has, and always will be a gamble against the odds.
Previous recent episodes like this happened in 1991, 1997 and 2003. Most recently I remember a very late heavy frost towards the end of April 2017 that took out a lot of vines. These people have very short memories, but that won’t stop them marking it up as yet more proof of “climate change”™.
Frost in April is not rare, and we still use the old medieval dates called the “Saints de Glace” to mark the start of the frost free period, traditionally the 11th,12th and 13th of May in France.
Same in Germany, the name aswell.
So they planted early to avoid heatwaves, discounting the possibility of frost in April. I wonder where they got that idea from?
Send in La Greta to warm things up.
Too expensive. She has to pay Adult Fare now for travel.
And she can legally buy a drink in a Glasgow bar, but won’t.
She can’t yet, and hopefully will boycott the climate jamboree anyway. Scotland doesn’t open beer gardens until April 26th. From today in England, you can get table service in beer gardens of pubs who choose to open in the snow. I don’t think there will be much demand for ice in drinks when there is still ice on the ground.
She’s not that big, for how long could she possibly burn? Doesn’t seem worth even the bus fare.
She is busy at the moment holding her breathe until she turns blue, in an effort to get other people to forget about self-preservation.
For the moment weather always trumps climate.
Welcome to Texas…yall.
Coming to the Central and Eastern US late next weekend.
Joel, this is just probability…what’s the value associated. I don’t much care about a 70% probability of 2 degrees below normal.
More like highs 15 – 20 F below normal. Normal should highs in the high 70’s to low 80’s. Actual highs will be 50’s -60’s F.
And Canada with the big blank area has no weather at all!
Bob, in Vancouver.
It’s because Canada is a fiction – it’s a made up place. I mean, really – who would believe a country of Permafrost, with a GDP made of 50% oil and 50% maple syrup, where donuts and poutine are the national foods, and they run around and say “eh” every other word.
It’s like Loompa Land. A fiction.
See Edgar Poe : Melonta Tauta, a report from the airship Skylark over the empire of Kanadaw about the the ancient Amriccans :
the ancient Amriccans governed themselves!- did ever anybody hear of such an absurdity?- that they existed in a sort of every-man-for-himself confederacy, after the fashion of the “prairie dogs” that we read of in fable. He says that they started with the queerest idea conceivable, viz: that all men are born free and equal- this in the very teeth of the laws of gradation so visibly impressed upon all things both in the moral and physical universe. Every man “voted,” as they called it- that is to say meddled with public affairs- until at length, it was discovered that what is everybody’s business is nobody’s, and that the “Republic” (so the absurd thing was called) was without a government at all.
Canada should be PRAYING for some global warming !!
That’s what makes it governments actions so HILARIOUS !! 🙂
Russia is more enlightened- it’s praying that Siberia will warm up.
Its why we have a progressively more stupid govt.
Because stupid.
Same thing as saying “Trudeau”, is just shorthand
If those predictions were 100% right then you know all you would hear about is how “hot” it is on the west coast.
Damned that CO2!!
This is what happens with univariate models and consensus around them.
Will they now tap the Paris Climate Agreement fund now?
Uncle Joe may have some cash payments for you too.
I still can’t understand the fear of warming. It’s a lot easier to live on a warmer planet than a colder one. It’s a lot easier to grow food on a warmer planet than a cold one. We are not seeing more tornadoes. We are not seeing more hurricanes. We are not seeing rising sea levels. Flooding can be controlled. Drought can be controlled. Israel desalinates sea water. Why can’t California?
Jeremiah,
It was never about fear of warming; it was about instilling fear of imaginary catastrophes in the ignorant and weakminded! The elites want unfettered control over the masses, and abundant fuel and energy provides too much freedom, mobility AND prosperity; something they feel is proper only for themselves!
They’ve known all along that the slight warming that is occurring due to natural cycles will make life even easier, with higher crop yields and expanding temperate zones. Feudalism 2.0 requires a more ignorant and docile population; and between wrecking the public education system, and bringing in an unending string of “deadly” viruses they are well on their way to the corporate Communist Utopia!
Communist China isn’t so much the enemy as it is the model they want to develop worldwide!
It’s about power. Absolute political power. They want you to be afraid, because people who are afraid don’t sit down and think about things, they react, and they react in ways that can be predicted. It’s a bit like herding sheep I suppose.
Hence, sheeple.
Yesterday on Canada’s Weather Network TV they had a segment on replay about how last year was a record for named storms, hurricanes and major hurricanes. And this year the prediction is for more of the same. A consequence of climate change.
The solutions for Americans is to buy wine from grapes grown in central Washington, USA.
Most wine in the State is from central area grapes, but watch the labels. If you don’t know about label laws, then likely you will drink just about anything.
So sick of this cr&*. It’s always news if it’s hot. It never was about climate was it. (Not a question)
It never was about climate; it was always about global wealth redistribution by freezing assets in the ground indefinitely. Similarly The Lockdown was never about a virus; it was all about global wealth redistribution by freezing workers in their homes indefinitely. Both initiatives have been most successful in achieving their aims.
If you look at Ventusky, the reason is clear.
There is a big blocking high over the Atlantic blocking the Westerlies.
There was a big low center just off the coast of Norway.
The counter clockwise low and the clockwise high in tandem just pulled the North cold air over England and France. It looked epic.
BTW, that blocking high is why wind power in England has been low for a week or so. Wind power in the UK was very high during that cold snap,as the north wind poured down over England, though. But, once the low dissipated, the wind power dropped to zilch again.
So, weather is all about which way the wind blows.
Nothing knew.
What’s the point of studying weather if you can’t do anything about it. If a country deployed say 1000 jets (preferably big bombers or transports) and flew them through a blocking high, or better yet, a hurricane – would it be enough for it to change course, even move it a little?
No, not by several orders of magnitude.
Where does the Lavender colored frost come from ??
Camera filter 🙂
Thought it might have been another thing caused by AGW !!! 🙂
Purple Frost.
Aaaaaack! The dreaded Purple Frost!
We must immediately stop using fossil fuels, raise taxes, and form a One World Government.
Variable weather IS NOT climate.
Lets not confound the two here as is oft done elsewhere.
Yes, weather is highly variable and can differ wildly day by day let alone year by year
tonyb
Your correct, both sides of cooling ,warming tend to mix climate for weather, what does seem to be a pattern is for a least the last 3 years Europe has seen interruption and damage to the early growing season, farmers plant and plan to known season patterns ,these have been interrupted because of cold, not adverse weather not global warming. This is observed in real time eg this article.
The only group who have been anywhere near a true prediction on climate ,are the GSM people
The warmests we know are obsessive agenda driven zealots their foot soldiers blindley following the agenda like a religion.whos predictions,models have never panned out.
Then we have the people who argue the science who don’t agree with global warming the data says so, for reasons that are impossible to verify ie co2 .
And the UK is having to turn some COAL back on to help GAS and NUCLEAR provide the electricity…
Wind, in the doldrums yet again… UNRELIABLE.
Germany just the same at 8:30 this morning when everything starts being turned on. Coal to the rescue.
All that nameplate wind power and solar supplying sweet fanny adams just when you need it.
Just like Texas
And just like in Texas, any shortage is not the fault of renewables
Hi,
I don’t have a link to the page you got that German data from.. could you provide it, pretty please.
https://www.electricitymap.org/map
Thanks, Great that they are showing which countries are contributing to the future biosphere wellbeing of the planet 🙂
and?
this isn’t the start of an ice age or even any cooling trend.
Certainly not a sign of “gerbil worming” though, is it,
Poor DESPERATE griff-tard. !
Hot weather = evidence for Global Warming. Cold weather = merely weather.
Isn’t that so, Griff?
As I write this, on April 12 2021 at 08:30AM, here in the south of England (about 20 miles SW of London) it is snowing. It’s melting on contact with the ground, but snowing nonetheless. Just wanted to make a note of that here when in January next year they will be claiming that 2021 was the “Hottest year evah!”
Yesterday here in Torbay we had our first breakfast of the year outdoors. Then the cloud moved in during the afternoon and the sun went and it turned much colder. Today we will be in town outdoors having a meal. Hope they havent gone green and have instead installed some outdoor heaters
tonyb
I hope you’re well dressed when you go for your meal- indoor dining is still forbidden in the UK, and it’s bl00dy cold down here in North Cornwall!
Had 1/4 of an inch 40 miles west of London which settled mostly on roofs and cars. Unusual, but not rare for this time of year.
I’m sitting here in France watching it snow. Mind you a few weeks ago we had unseasonably good weather with lots of sunshine. But the freeze thaw sun freeze routine is playing havoc with planting and looks like the grape crop this year will be veruy limited…
Check Robert Parker Wine Advocat on 1989 and 1990 Bordeaux. As far as I remember those record wine years (fabulous red wines) had frost in May.