It’s been a weird, wild and extreme April for northern France. The extremes extend back to February where we saw 13cm of snow in Paris. The greatest amount since 2010 and 2nd biggest since 1989.

Credit: @JulienTrezeux

All of the below stats were measured at the official recording site for the city at Montsouris. Info and stats courtesy of Etienne Kapikian and Météo Villes.

After the snowstorm in February, March hosted more snow and amazingly the coldest back to back late March days since 1888. Later that same year (1888), the Eiffel Tower was under construction.

How about April? Perhaps best of all. After starting off the month chilly, on the 20th the temperature soared to 29.2C, the warmest April day since 1949.

10 days later and the heat was a distant memory as Paris ended the month on an unusually cold note. So much so that the maximum of 6.8C was the lowest for April 30th on record and coldest for so late in the season since 18 May 1935 when there was 3cm of snow and a maximum of just 5C.

Several towns between Paris and the English Channel witnessed their coldest daytime maximum for so late in the season.

In Rouen, located NW of Paris observed it’s warmest April day on record on April 20th with 27.4C, surpassing the 26.4C set in 2015. 10 days later on April 30, the maximum was only 4.9C, the coldest for so late in the season, comfortably surpassing a 1991 record of 5.8C back in 1991.

Into May and in the wake of the storm system came clear skies. With Paris dropping to 4C on May 2nd. Lowest value for May since 2013 and 2nd lowest in 20 years.

The temperature pendulum is about to swing back the other way this weekend and warmer still next week…

Significant warm up and models are often underdone like they were back between April 18-22. Paris could well reach the upper 20s again by mid next week.

FEATURED IMAGE CREDIT: Pasztilla aka Attila Terbócs

Tags: paris, paris cold, Paris heat, paris records, paris snow