Insurers in the country are raising premiums as bouts of extreme weather become more common

Hail has flattened vines and crops, smashed roofs and ruined vehicles across large parts of France for the third time this year.

The government promised aid to farmers and wine producers yesterday after the latest bout of violent weather, as hail often compared in size to golf balls wrought millions of euros’ worth of destruction in the middle and southwestern regions from Sunday until yesterday.

In Digoin, on the Loire River in the central Saône-et-Loire, yesterday, senator Fabien Genet said “we have just had a storm of unprecedented violence with hailstones of a size that has never been seen in the memory of the inhabitants”. “There was enormous damage. The Plexiglas roofs exploded in the gymnasium.”