Being pedantic here administrative rationalisations meant Dordogne became part of Aquitaine a few years ago. It is all now Nouvelle Aquitaine. The weather remains the same.
I chose to live in Lot-et-Garonne just a few kilometres south of the Garonne river precisely because the climate is less extreme: mild winters (some frosts but very little snow,) and more temperate summers ( rarely gets above 33° for more than a few days at a time). The river has a huge effect on the climate certainly from Bordeaux as far as, and possibly beyond, Agen. The trick is to live a few kilometres away in order to avoid flooding when the river can go from 130m wide to 6 km. Bridges do get closed on a regular basis too causing long diversions.

I also have friends in that well known tourist village of Monpazier, which is in southern Dordogne and have noticed that not only does the height above sea level have an effect on how cold/ warm it gets but also on the flora. Towards the end of last month we drove up to see our friends and could not help but notice how the leaf fall was much more advanced than at home but also whilst our farmers were still out harvesting maize and even sunflowers the further north we went the more we saw fully ploughed fields. Winter was rapidly approaching.We were glad to come south again.

With regard to your wife's health you probably need to consider where are the hospitals of excellence. If we need more than day surgery we probably have to go to Agen in the east, or Langon or Bordeaux In the west. There is currently talk of withdrawing A&E from Marmande and Nérac, meaning patients from their catchment areas will then have almost an hour's journey once it has been decided that somebody needs hospital treatment! I imagine the main hospitals in Dordogne are in Bergerac and Périgueux but know nothing about them. Pau in the Pyrenees-Atlantique also gets good reports in the press.
Hope that helps a bit.

 

We are looking to move to France but need a decent climate better than the UK for my wife’s health.

I think that in 5 years time the UK will offer a better climate for health.

France is to hot in the summer now wherever you live. You also have more serious weather events.

Be careful here OP.

 

France is too hot in the summer now wherever you live.

It wasn't too hot in France this summer though - warm and wet would describe most places. Admittedly the previous 4 summers were very hot and dry. Who knows what sort of weather we'll get in the future?

Nouvelle Aquitaine is a huge area reaching from just north of central France down to the Pyrenees. I live just south of centre. The weather here at the moment is lovely for the season - blue skies and sunshine (17°C in the shade).

As ccm says you have to choose your altitude and location carefully, it can make a big difference.

 

Too hot wherever you live?
You haven't been to Brittany then.
Long row of hysterical laughing smileys

 

Too hot wherever you live?
You haven't been to Brittany then.
Long row of hysterical laughing smileys

Not sure where you live in Brittany, we live in southern Morbihan and this year had some unbearably hot days. OK I agree not when holiday-makers would have preferred it in August but very hot even so.
Once it gets to touching 40°C then it is a choice between closing the shutters and staying inside or cycling to the beach and sitting in the sea as even sitting in the shade of a tree wasn't cool enough.

 

We live in the Charente, just north of the Dordogne and we've had two summers here, now heading into our third winter. The two summers could not have been more different, 2020 was warm (25+) and occasionally hot (30+), 2021 was wet and cool, only saw one day over 30 and most of the time the pool temperature would not get above 25. Hopefully next year will be back to what our friends and neighbours call normal.

However, if you want year-round warmth then I would not move to France but Spain, somewhere close to Almeria which has a true Mediterranean climate.

 

A month ago I asked on this forum for suggestions about websites to give an overview of climate, and got some really helpful replies: Climate overview website?
Recommend that you take a look. The WeatherSpark site has an interesting way of presenting year-long, all-day data.

It's probably a good tool to have handy, but I strongly support what others have already said, that weather can be very different even over quite short distances, altitude is crucial, and also which side of any hills you look at - north, east, south or west facing ?

France gets winds from all directions and they carry very different weather - from the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, the North Sea, Eastern Europe and Germany, and Southern Europe. At this time of year, for example, here in Toulouse we can get a blast of dry, glacially cold air blown over the Massif Central from central Europe, followed almost within hours by warm(ish) wet air from the Med and then the leftovers of a storm blowing in from the Bay of Biscay.

Edit: Having said that (and it sounds a bit negative) we have a very dry climate which might interest you. Still get a wide variation of temperature, though.

 

Just to add to what I wrote above, today is 17C, clear blue skies and almost no wind; really quite pleasant. Substantially warmer and dryer than much of the UK right now

 

That is not good....that is bad for mid November !

BTW...it is 19 + in our cour.

 

Smeg, you need to find some facts to support your theories. Globally it might have been the hottest on record but in France, which is what the OP asked about, it was a cr*p summer.

 

We toured several departements this summer (Creuse, Puy DD, Correze, N Dordogne/S Charente, Allier, H Vienne). It was cool and damp (in Allier, it was freezing in the evenings!).

Our friends in Charente (Chirac) said it was like it all year. Hardly used their pool. Mind you, the lawn was looking more British than usual.

 

Ok...we measure the summer now by how many days you spend in your swimming pool. Jeesus....do you realise how sad that sounds ?

It is flippin hot out there today. Nature is in trouble.

It is nearly mid Novemeber. We should have frost in the morning and crisp afternoons.

No, we have 19 degrees.

That is not good...and it will get worse not better.

It did reach 35 + this year in central France if anyone remembers.

 

Ok...we measure the summer now by how many days you spend in your swimming pool. Jeesus....do you realise how sad that sounds ?

Sad? you do have some funny ideas. Would you call it sad if farmers had too much rain, sailors too much or not enough wind. The ability to make use of the outdoors is a very good indicator of what sort of summer we experienced.

It is flippin hot out there today. Nature is in trouble.

19 is flippin hot???????

flippin hot is over 30

 

I would certainly like to know of areas that have a good long growing season for the cultivation of plants. Having mostly lived in cold areas where the window of opportunity and daylight hours are relatively short, I'm minded to look for somewhere more temperate. I appreciate, though, that this may become less predictable in future, but would still be interested in knowing what is there presently.

 

This summer was relatively cool here at the foot of the Pyrenees, but we have had weird weather for the past several years, including strong winds that are definitely not the norm, and this year far more so. Not much snow in recent years, but plenty of frost, though less so this year. Dry weather and lots of dust. Last winter we had a very hot dust storm from the Sahara.

All I can say is that nothing is 'normal' now and I have zero idea of what to expect in coming years, other than that it will very likely be totally unusual.

Add to that the cost of electricity and gas, nuclear power stations and nuclear waste buried all over France, and even more to come and I am very close to baisser les bras as we say here.

Will it be better than the UK, who knows, but things look very bad at the North Pole and the South Pole is no better, so you definitely also need to take account of sea level rise and not just weather.

 

As others have said, it covers a vast area. I live towards the middle of it, and have traveled and explored the region in all directions to the outer extremities. The biggest problem you have is there are so many micro-climates. You could be near Ruffec for example, growing pomegranate trees and chayote and everything has two weeks advance on an area barely 30 minutes away, where you might struggle to grow the same things.
If you branch off further east into Corrèze or the higher parts of Haute-Vienne, and Creuse the extra altitude will bring with it colder winters. Dordogne seems pleasant enough, but covers a large area, so probably depends if you're close to Corrèze, or going further south towards Lot. Again altitude plays a big role.
I'm in Charente next to the Haute-Vienne border, and have lived here quite a lot of years. Every year has been different. We've had some freakishly cold winters, and very mild ones. There are some days in December, January or February where it's reached 20C and I've been out in a t-shirt, there was one year where it hit -20C and played havoc with the water pipes.Some summers have been extremely dry and hot (some days hitting 40C) with no rain for months, or take this summer and it's been cold, mild and wet for the most part - certainly the wettest coldest summer I can recall. It's a real mixed bag, and with the climate changing I think it's completely unpredictable.

 

I wont be visiting Normandy in the summer anymore. Its too hot for us and the dogs.
Who'd of thought that.
Tolerance to temperatures can be just age related, so what suits me now is different to 20 years ago.

I've been on the beach in the summer,(tee shirts and shorts) and some French people still have their coats on🤣

 

I wont be visiting Normandy in the summer anymore. Its too hot for us and the dogs.
Who'd of thought that.

I rest my case.

The weather is the most important factor to consider when choosing a location and house when you are thinking of moving to France.

And it is not about the cold, it is about the heat.

Did you know that Brittany now has some of the highest rates of skn cancer in France !

 

In response to the original question that started this thread: Right now is possibly the worst time ever to try to draw conclusions or generalizations about "the weather" here in France or anywhere, for that matter.

As already stated, this past summer was a real strange one - certainly in all the 25+ years that I've been living here in France. Cold, rainy and thoroughly a-typical from what has gone before. And, with the recent Cop 26 meetings kind of crapping out on any sort of genuine commitments regarding changes that might actually make a difference, it looks like the only "prediction" anyone can make is that the weather is set to become much more erratic as time goes on.

Back when I first moved over here (to Europe) they simply didn't have tornadoes here. The last several years, we seem to have at least one or two - often more than that when a particularly active front comes through - every year. They are different from the big, well photographed and documented, tornadoes they get in the American midwest - but because no one really knows how to predict or track them here (partly because they often touch down only very briefly) they can be very destructive.

I will disagree with what Smeg has said here - it is rather foolish (IMO) to move anywhere based primarily on the weather. What you want to do is consider not only the weather as it is, but how well adapted your home is (or can be) for potential changes in the climate, access to the resources you need (shops, medical facilities, transportation, etc.) for your situation as it is likely to evolve.

 

Volcanoes are "weather"?

 

I recently heard a word that was new to me, a "medicane".

A Rare Medicane Forms South of Italy, Prompts Red Alert Warning for Sicily, Malta and Libya as More Extreme Rain and Destructive Floods Heads Their Way Over the Weekend

A tropical-like cyclone - Medicane forms in the Mediterranean. It is forecast to bring more extreme rain and flooding to Sicily.

www.severe-weather.eu

 

Been around ( the coined word) since the 80s...

Mediterranean tropical-like cyclone - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

Medicane? Never heard that before either.
Just looked it up, short for Mediterranean hurricane - but "medicane" sounds like health insurance...

 

After 3 years there, I quit living in southern Greece (Crete/Peloponnese) for France.
The heat, the dryness, the fact that nights don't cool down sufficiently, the furnace hot wind, swarms of locusts which ravage your garden.
Heat takes a toll on you.
That was 40 years ago, now we've moved from the south Ardèche to the Limousin.
I love Mediterranean culture, scenery, the whole works but we needed cooler nights, more greenery, less tourists.

If it's cold, really cold - like minus 20° with a freezing wind blowing,
well you dress up warm and do what you need to do then get back inside and warm up

If it's really hot - over 36° and up to 40/42° - the heat hits me like a sledgehammer on the head.
Reality starts to fall apart.
If you have to work and you have a van without aircon it's downright dangerous.
People go crazy.
And all that heat stocked up in houses walls by day is released at night-time to deprive you of decent sleep

Summer of 2019 was terrible here in the Limousin - heatwave, drought, water restrictions through till November.
Centuries-old oak trees' greenery are studded with dead branches as a result.
This year's summer was a respite but frankly climate change is irreversible.

This year we had 25° in Montluçon (Allier) in February; the warm weather lasted 2 or 3 weeks
then a wave of icy cold froze all the buds and shoots and killed off cherries, peaches and apricots - even the apples!
Then floods and a cold, wet summer that brought mildew to everyone's tomatos

Climate change stimulates some people to innovate;
pistachios are back in the south of France
and they've planted African elephant grass in the Dordogne.
Others stay steadfast to pumping deeper and deeper to irrigate maize with water cannons.
Maize for green bio ethanol.

We had a prospective buyer for our house this year - from Savoie.
The pine forests around his home were dying, drying out and he hoped the Limousin would be a better place to live.
"Maybe it'll get me off the hook for ten years before the same thing happens there" he said.

Someone mentioned altitude being important when choosing a place to live.
Facing north can be interesting in hotter regions.
Then there's local commodities being available - not to neglect either.

We struck a good deal here and hope to stay put for a fair while inch'allah

 

After 3 years there, I quit living in southern Greece (Crete/Peloponnese) for France.
The heat, the dryness, the fact that nights don't cool down sufficiently, the furnace hot wind, swarms of locusts which ravage your garden.
Heat takes a toll on you.
That was 40 years ago, now we've moved from the south Ardèche to the Limousin.
I love Mediterranean culture, scenery, the whole works but we needed cooler nights, more greenery, less tourists.

If it's cold, really cold - like minus 20° with a freezing wind blowing,
well you dress up warm and do what you need to do then get back inside and warm up

If it's really hot - over 36° and up to 40/42° - the heat hits me like a sledgehammer on the head.
Reality starts to fall apart.
If you have to work and you have a van without aircon it's downright dangerous.
People go crazy.
And all that heat stocked up in houses walls by day is released at night-time to deprive you of decent sleep

Summer of 2019 was terrible here in the Limousin - heatwave, drought, water restrictions through till November.
Centuries-old oak trees' greenery are studded with dead branches as a result.
This year's summer was a respite but frankly climate change is irreversible.

This year we had 25° in Montluçon (Allier) in February; the warm weather lasted 2 or 3 weeks
then a wave of icy cold froze all the buds and shoots and killed off cherries, peaches and apricots - even the apples!
Then floods and a cold, wet summer that brought mildew to everyone's tomatos

Climate change stimulates some people to innovate;
pistachios are back in the south of France
and they've planted African elephant grass in the Dordogne.
Others stay steadfast to pumping deeper and deeper to irrigate maize with water cannons.
Maize for green bio ethanol.

We had a prospective buyer for our house this year - from Savoie.
The pine forests around his home were dying, drying out and he hoped the Limousin would be a better place to live.
"Maybe it'll get me off the hook for ten years before the same thing happens there" he said.

Someone mentioned altitude being important when choosing a place to live.
Facing north can be interesting in hotter regions.
Then there's local commodities being available - not to neglect either.

We struck a good deal here and hope to stay put for a fair while inch'allah

I had forgotten that 2019 event which affected most of the SW of France. It did not bother me too much at the time. It fortunately only hit around - 12 here. I think around - 6 in much of the Dordogne, but IIRC only lasted a few days.

I find as I age, it's the really hot weather that affects me most and that does seem to be more hotter and more frequent. I think it was in 2019 as well that we had many days well over 40 deg here, hitting as much as 44.

 

Does all this unpredictability mean the French are going to become as obsessed with the weather as the Brits 😄

 

Only if they live in the UK🤣

 

Sounds as though if I did buy in France, a plunge pool might be in order 😄