France under red flood code after storm. Warning: Europe must prepare for a 3°C warmer world
Flooding in Chalonnes-sur-Loire, in western France, on February 17, 2026. Photo: Damien Meyer / AFP / Profimedia
France has issued red flood alerts in three departments after storm Nils caused water to overflow and cut off several towns. Authorities are warning that river levels are rising again, while climate experts say such extreme phenomena will become more frequent, notes The Guardian.
Météo France announced that red flood alerts will remain in place on Wednesday in the Gironde, Lot-et-Garonne and Maine-et-Loire departments, but the number of those under code orange will drop from 14 to 12.
Monique Barbut, the minister for the ecological transition, said that the state of emergency, needed to speed up insurance compensation procedures, would be declared after the floods ended.
“Those who have long followed climate issues have warned us that such events will become more frequent. In fact, that 'tomorrow' has arrived,” she said on Tuesday, a day after visiting the flood-hit Gironde region, in an intervention on LCI television.
Lucie Chadourne-Facon, director of Vigicrues, the French flood monitoring service, said the sequence of rain disturbances was “exceptional” and that the soils were so waterlogged that amounts of just 20-30mm of rainfall could trigger floods.
“We are dealing with two parallel phenomena,” she told BFMTV at the weekend.
“The fact that the phenomenon is territorially extended means that all the small rivers that have reacted flow into large rivers, and the levels increase by propagation,” she explained. “At the same time, it continues to rain, which reactivates the flooding.”
Vigicrues announced that “potentially damaging flooding” was ongoing on the Garonne River downstream of Agen, with the situation serious in the Marmande and Gironde areas. Although water levels have slowly receded after peaking at the weekend, they are rising again on the lower Garonne sector.
Authorities expect major flooding Tuesday afternoon on the Maine River, including in the city of Angers, and overnight on the Loire River in the Ponts-de-Cé area. Water levels are expected to continue rising throughout Wednesday.
The flooding in France comes after a series of storms hit Portugal and Spain, killing at least 16 and forcing thousands to flee their homes.
Global warming warning
Scientists haven't yet done attribution studies to determine whether global warming made the flooding worse, but they point to a well-known relationship in physics that warmer air can hold more moisture.
On Tuesday, the European Union's science advisers urged Europe to prepare for a world 3C warmer by the end of the century, double the level of global warming world leaders pledged to limit under the 2015 Paris Agreement, and to test even more extreme scenarios.
France's national adaptation strategy, published last year, aims to prepare the country for a global warming scenario of up to 4°C.
“We've reached a point where these phenomena are occurring at a speed and intensity that we've never seen before,” Barbut told LCI. “It is clear that we need to implement adaptation policies that allow us to build resilience in our territories.”
