In the time I was in France this year mid June to.mid August , there was I think rain on two occasions in Bretagne ..neither of which lasted long enough to soak the ground . Would I be correct in saying that that level of drought persists over the next month ..August to September ..?
No. The amount and monthly distribution of rain varies from year to year.
Une sécheresse des sols à un niveau historique en France, après des pluies « quasi absentes » en septembre
Dans certains territoires, le niveau de sécheresse atteint des seuils jamais observés, toutes saisons confondues.
Le Monde avec AFP
Publié le 22 septembre 2026 à 19h57, modifié le 22 septembre 2026 à 20h01
Temps deLecture 1 min.
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Not helpful.at all. How much in your area of France since June2026 would have been information
In the Morvan we’ve had very wet years with rivers bursting banks, and this year has been exceptionally dry. I don’t think one can predict very effectively.
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I’m sure we’ve been reading French press saying that this year has definitely not been like any other… 
and the maps showing rainfall (and/or drought) are already somewhere on this forum… 
Not quite sure what info you actually seeking @Dan1 ???
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Perhaps look at the real information produced by meteo France
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Here in Calvados my neighbour tells me our stream dried up completely (never seen that in 18 years). I think there’s some water in it again but not much.
Other neighbours say that when the rain came it was torrential and just sluiced off the ground without soaking into it.
Contrast with Devon where our stream though low, has kept almost normal summer level. Recenting testing on the citizen’s scheme, has however shown a high level of phosphate in the water.
The fields north of me, where the farmer has had maize, are rock hard. Over to the west, there is, miraculously, organic pasture and those fields look fine, as do the other small fields in the stream valley.
Soil compaction is a very serious problem with intensive farming. This year might broaden a few minds on the subject, we’ll see.
In Devon there too we see moves to enlarge fields, destroying hedgerows and farming wheat, barley, rapeseed and maize intensively. Very little life will survive in our streams if this goes on.
The decline of the ash trees continues, and though the farmers are cashing in on selling the timber to firewood contractors, there are no trees being planted. None.
If you have been around in one place in the country in both the UK and France for a while, you can see the changes taking place. The pace is quickening. We are in deep trouble and making all the wrong moves.
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I’m slightly encouraged that this year I’m only just now nearing an empty well. I think I’ll have enough water with careful management to see the tomato plants out. Also in summer I took quite a lot of water out for potatoes and pumpkin and still I just about have some left.
But in the drought year, which I think was 2022, I had no plants and wasn’t using the well and inside it was just dry earth by August.
So I am really hoping for a very wet winter even though I don’t want it in other ways. Apparently next summer will be worse than this one. But after that, things are supposed to go back to being more normal - well regression towards the mean anyway.
We actually opened our well for the first time, just out of curiosity. It turns out that the water is about 22m down and seems to be moving, like an underground stream. Is that likely?
Sounds like you could have a spring there if it’s not a fairly hardy atream (as quite a few that flowed before, have dried up). Hopefully somebody who actually knows about thia stuff can say.
Then perhaps that’s the question you should have asked.
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there is a house up the street which has 2 wells in the cellars. One well rises, non-stop, and an underground pipe has been fitted to allow the water (above a certain level) to simply flow/move outside the house and straight into the rainwater drains in the main street and on down to the stream in the valley. The other well never rises above half-full and hasn’t dried out this year
Our well is connected to underground water/streams/sources and has become much lower than usual, but not dry, not yet
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We have a weather station in the village so I can say with certainty that we’ve had 73mm of rain since June 1st in South Charente. More than I thought actually. September has delivered a mere 3mm so far.
We can go years without any proper rain and this year has been the same again. What you might call a watering can shower of five mins that did not even make the ground wet and hence why we have red fire alerts most of the year especially with the tramontine.
Thank you for the responses .. I had a suspicion that it was dire … I had been anticipating a bill from the guy I had contracted to cut our grass ..pelouse is to grand a word for it .
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This year has been unusual, everyone tells us, just as they did last year.
We’re 20km south of Saumur. The Loire was pretty high early in the year, then we had repeated canicules and still haven’t had much rain.
Rain/moisture seemed quite localised. We had a bit of rain at the end of August and everything became quite verdant, rivers recovered and you’d not have known there had been a secherese by the second week of September. Farmers were putting cattle and sheep out to graze instead of giving them hay.
I should have mentioned, the Jura was strikingly green and luxuriant - no hint of drought at all there last weekend.
But then we drove over to Moulins Engilbert in the Nievre - everything was yellow and crispy, rivers barely moving and streambeds empty. It was really striking. On the autoroute driving north last Monday we saw what looked like a cloud of smoke in the distant air, but was actually dust rising from someone ploughing, and this was repeated several times on the journey.
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It’s all artificial grass down here, lots of companies have this as a business. The only grass that seems to grow in the heat and drought is the Japanese one which is not very nice and looks like weeds. At least with artificial you can cut to size and just water or blow it and nothing to compost.
I see artificial grass as a horrific traversty
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