Climate of the Puy-de-Dôme

The climate of the Puy-de-Dôme is one of most complex of France and most paradoxical taking into consideration department other. That is due to:

its central position in the middle of France which essentially places it between various oceanic and continental influences;
its relief.

This department resembles an arena with for edges heights, volcanic origin for some, and basins of collapse. The Massif Central is an old mountain that the rising of the the Alps raised. Its reliefs culminate with 1 886 m with the Puy de Sancy (which missed giving its name to the department), 1 634 m with Pierre-on-High in the Drill and 1 218 m in Our-Lady-of-Mons (common of Champétières) in the Livradois.

These altitudes are of course at the origin of thermal and pluviometric differences enormous between exposed heights and basins of collapse like the central Limagne which cuts the department in two mountainous entities and which undergoes itself by its North-South position and its axis, transverse with the major modes of the arrivals of rain, the effect of Fœhn.

Approximately, here, more one goes up, more the précipations are abundant, reaching the 2 000 mm on the puy of Sancy, that being valid especially for the west, Auvergne imposing the first true transverse mountains since the ocean which consequently are masterly barriers that meet the winds dominant and charged, of west or south-west which come to be sponged and release their water blade there.

Whereas the west of the department is very oceanic, (rise in temperature and frequent snow clearance) the east is more continental and consequently colder in winter, snow is maintained there more. The Puy de Dôme is a wet, fresh mountain more than cold, definitely less for example at equal altitude that the the Jura. The definition of its climate could be as follows: oceanic climate attenuated by the distance with the sea and deteriorated by altitude, presenting here and there, especially in certain protected valleys, of the points of continentality. With low and average altitude, the thermal amplitude can be enormous, and reach 30 °C in the same day (examples of temperatures in Combrailles: 0 °C the morning, 30 °C the afternoon, at the beginning of June).

One can distinguish three principal entities: two Western and Eastern bumps mountainous wet which frame Limagne if drained (- 600 annual mm of rain) and canicular in summer, storms put aside) that it allows the culture of corn and that of the vines on the slopes which confer a pace quasi-Southerner to him. She profits from an effect of fœhn comparable with that of the Alsace (warming and draining) but undergoes also by-effects frozen by phenomenon of inversion (cold which remains to stagnate in the hollows, example: the same morning + 3 °C on the top of the Puy de Dôme, 1467 m of altitude, against - 15 °C with in the downtown area of Clermont-Ferrand, with 350 m of altitude).

The true mountain climate is found only above the 1000 to 1200 m, the limit of the 800 is with regard to snowing up that of the climate semi-mountain dweller.

When a hot summer or that one frozen winter settles, the solid mass is one of the places of France most prone to records, records which border them - 30 °C in cold season (them - 40 °C in the the Jura) and exceeds the 40 °C in hot season (see records Vichy, located apart from the department, but with its northern edge), the relief and the position-hinge between influences are there for something. Lower winter temperatures were noted but they were not taken under shelter.

Contrary to the the Alps where the habitat culminates with more 2 000 m (Saint-Véran) apart from the Jasserie S, there does not exist traditional habitat in Auvergne above 1 250 m of altitude, except exception, because of its relief not protected and of the exposure to the wind and the bad weather, the Massif Central is a mountain more horizontal than vertical. More than one mountain, it would deserve the title of plate.

These thermal and pluviometric variations are at the origin of vegetations staged and extremely various according to the western slopes or is and consequently of very different agricultural activities, and that a few kilometres from distance.

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