In all, 11 departments in the south west were placed on Orange alert on Tuesday morning by Météo France with violent storms, featuring hail showers and gales set to sweep through the region.

The departments on orange alert are Vienne, Deux-Sevres, Charente-Maritime, Charente, Dordogne, Gironde, Lot-et-Garonne, Gers, Landes, hautes-Pyrénées, Pyrénées-Atlantique.

“This wave of storms will be marked by a high risk of localised hail storms, violent gusts of wind reaching 80 to 90km/h, possibly passing 100km/h,” reads the warning on Météo France.

Intense downpours are also predicted with up to 60mm of rainfall forecast in some areas over a short space of time.

The alerts are set to come into place at 2pm on Tuesday and will last until midnight.

Temperatures have been high in the region, including up to 35C in Dordogne, but they will give way to storms throughout the afternoon, which will hit the western end of the Pyrenées mountains first.

Elsewhere in France it was a different story.

The Ile-de-France region around Paris, was placed on yellow alert – the one below Orange – for a mini-heatwave which will see temperatures sneak into the low 30s on Tuesday.

Forest fires warning in south

Residents in the south of France have also been asked to be on alert for wild fires due to the ongoing high temperatures and lack of rain in the region. High winds have exacerbated the danger.

France’s General Direction of Civil Security is asking people to be extremely careful on Tuesday in the departments that lie on the Mediterranean coast, where wildfires have already burned hundreds of hectares of land this summer.

Temperatures are set to fall towards the end of the week as the storms make their way across the country which should herald the arrival of typical autumnal weather.