Music Festival: cascading cancellations due to violent storms

Many concerts for the Fête de la Musique were canceled on Wednesday June 21 in cities such as Bordeaux or Clermont-Ferrand due to high risks of evening thunderstorms on a diagonal linking the South-West to the North-East.

The Weather Channel placed 23 departments on “orange alert” for “severe storms” this Wednesday evening, leading the prefectures to urge caution and some municipalities to give up all or part of the festivities. 24 other departments have been classified as “significant risks”.

In Clermont-Ferrand or Bourges, concerts in public space have been canceled due to stormy damage. In Bordeaux, “several organizers prefer to cancel certain outdoor scenes, or move them indoors for security reasons”, informed the town hall in a press release, specifying that 11 of the 12 outdoor concerts were canceled. In Clermont-Ferrand, it is a risk of "thunderstorms, hail and gusts of wind at 65 km / h from 6 p.m." which led the municipality to cancel all outdoor festivities.

Number of cancellations concern the South-West, with total bans decreed in Dax and Capbreton (Landes), Pau (Pyrénées-Atlantiques), Tarbes and Lourdes (Hautes-Pyrénées), or partial in Agen (Lot-et-Garonne) , Blaye (Gironde) and Biarritz (Pyrénées-Atlantiques). In Tarn-et-Garonne, the Department announced on Twitter the cancellation of the festivities in Montauban, the prefect advising all mayors and organizers to cancel the events.

The department has already been strongly affected by bad weather on Tuesday evening, which required more than 270 firefighter interventions. The prefecture says it expects new storms with gusts of wind that could reach "80 to 100 km / h", heavy rainfall and hail.

On Twitter, the Haute-Vienne prefecture requested “the cancellation of the festivities planned outdoors” and “any other event involving marquees, tents and structures”. And in Corrèze, a department also affected by a flood alert, the prefect also invites the organizers “to be vigilant for the festivities which are held near the rivers.”

In the Yonne, placed in orange vigilance, no cancellation for the time being but the prefecture calls on the municipalities to “ensure the protection and safety of the population with regard to the risk of violent orange, including by considering the cancellation of scheduled events. In 2022, the Fête de la Musique had already been disrupted by bad weather in Charente and Gironde.