Vendée mayor issues decree ‘against the rain’
A mayor in the Vendée has issued a decree demanding that the sun should shine “every morning”, and that rain is only allowed “three nights per week”.
Serge Rondeau, mayor of Challans, published the decree as a means to make his colleagues laugh after a particularly rainy few months.
Published on Wednesday February 14, the decree specified that sun should shine all day from Monday to Sunday “in the town of Challans and by extension throughout the entire Vendée department”, and that rain was only “authorised” on three nights, with “no exceptions granted”.
The mayor added that the enforcement of the decree would be left to the Challans gendarmerie and the municipal police.
The decree became necessary, the mayor said, because “the rain had invited itself in so often during the day [in recent months], that our citizens’ health has begun to depend on the rate of sunshine”.
“It started as an internal joke,” the communication service of Challans said, speaking to news source FranceInfo. “The mayor was a little tired of the weather, so he told a colleague: 'Get me a decree against the rain’. She took him at his word. He thought it was very funny and he signed it.”
Rondeau’s joking message comes with a more serious backstory: the Vendée has been one of the rainiest departments this year, and the nation in general has suffered the rainiest December to January period seen in 59 years.
And yet, the decree appears to be working so far: according to Météo France today, the Vendée is on “green level” - denoting “no particular vigilance” needed, and no severe rain predicted anywhere in the country.
