A 20-year-old man died on Saturday on the A6 in Burgundy in an accident likely due to the disruption crossing the north and east of France during this last weekend of the Christmas holidays. Around twenty departments are on orange snow-ice alert. Switzerland, in the north-west in particular, is also affected by ice alerts.
ATS
Heavy freezing rain, which led to the closure of several motorways in Burgundy on Saturday evening, appears to be the cause of a pileup of three vehicles on the A6, in the Paris-Lyon direction, near Mercueil ( Gold Coast).
The driver of one of the vehicles, a 20-year-old man, died, while four other people were slightly injured, including a 6-year-old child, firefighters said.
According to a report at 9:30 p.m., while the freezing rains were about to end according to the weather services, sixteen road accidents were recorded in Côte d’Or, causing sixty victims including, in addition to the young man who died, two seriously injured.
Throughout the country, and according to a new weather forecast broadcast at 10 p.m., 22 departments were still placed on orange alert until midnight. Only 14 will remain from this time until 6:00 a.m. Sunday, according to Météo France.
A few more hours
“A disturbance associated with a mild air mass is sweeping the entire country, in a southwest/northeast direction, during the night from Saturday to Sunday. This disturbance will encounter a mass of cold air in the north of the country, causing snowfall and especially freezing rain for a few hours, until the mild air takes over definitively,” specifies the agency.
Fourteen departments will still be on orange alert until Sunday 6:00 a.m., including Bas-Rhin, Haut-Rhin, Vosges and Territoire de Belfort.
Météo-France predicts snowfall “generally quite brief”, but warns that “they can be more persistent in the border departments of the Grand-Est, possibly giving up to five centimeters to the ground.” Freezing rain could then last “between one and three hours”.
In several regions, authorities have limited the speeds allowed on the roads.
