The Lyon region is affected by heavy rainfall this Sunday.
The capital of Gaul had never received so much water in the month of April.
Faced with this precipitation, the A47 motorway has been cut and the prefecture is calling for caution.
A deluge hit the Lyon region this Sunday, April 28. In 12 hours, the equivalent of a month of rain fell, Météo-France details in a press release. “This day will also go down in history as the wettest day for the month of April” since the opening of the Bron meteorological station more than 100 years ago. A record already broken at 5:30 p.m. – with 86 millimeters of water falling compared to 56 millimeters for the record of April 22, 1948 – and while the episode is still in progress and could last all evening in the Lyon metropolis.
Faced with the extent of the precipitation, the prefect of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes and Rhône region called for caution. “Faced with the persistence of this rainy episode this Sunday in the Rhône and the metropolis of Lyon, be careful when traveling”has she written on the social network.
A damaged TER
Several incidents have already been recorded in the Lyon region, with nearly 70 firefighter interventions recorded. As a safety measure, the A47 motorway between Lyon and Saint-Etienne was cut off to traffic, details France 3, due to flooding on the roadway near Givors. Furthermore, a TER transporting around 200 people found itself blocked on the track near Lyon following a “small landslide” due to bad weather, indicated the SNCF, specifying that there was no “no injuries”.
The train “stopped on the tracks after hitting stones which slipped from an embankment,” a spokesperson told AFP. This “small landslide” is to be attributed to the heavy rains which fell all day in the region, he said. The incident occurred around 7 p.m. in the town of Grigny, south of Lyon, and firefighters and SNCF personnel were dispatched to the site while waiting for another train and bus to be sent to evacuate passengers. He is “too early to tell” whether the train had derailed at this point, according to the spokesperson. Rail traffic is currently interrupted between Givors and Lyon-Perrache according to him.
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In total, over the last 24 hours, Lyon recorded 80 mm of rain, points out the Keraunos Observatory. The Rhône department is on yellow “flood” and “rain-flood” alert. This episode comes as significant rainfall and storms hit France this weekend, and France has experienced significant rain since mid-October. “The accumulation of the last seven months (October 1 to April 30) will exceed 750 millimeters and rank second behind the year 2000/2001 (far away with 870 mm) over the last 65 years,” thus points out Météo-France.
