A ‘water bomb’ fell on the French city of Lyon, in southeastern France, on Saturday evening. The equivalent of a month and a half of rain fell in just two hours. In the third largest city in France, the streets were soon flooded. Firefighters worked en masse last night and this morning to pump out the water.
LOOK. Images show how the ‘water bomb’ wreaked havoc in Lyon
The storm broke around 7:30 p.m. Saturday. The sewage system in Lyon could not process the large amount of water in such a short time. Most streets were soon flooded and many cars got stuck. Several metro stations in the city were also flooded, causing the metro services to be interrupted. In addition, several highways and highways were closed.
The torrential rain mainly affected the south of Lyon. The northern part of the city was largely spared from the flooding. The fire department of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region reported at least 120 incidents. Fortunately there were no casualties. The fire brigade continued with the pump works this morning as well.
“A wall of rain and hail”
According to the French weather channel ‘La Chaîne météo’, the equivalent of a month and a half of rain fell in Lyon in two hours. “Since 6 p.m., there was a series of severe thunderstorms that stretched from Isère to Puy-de-Dôme and moved through the Lyon region. In less than two hours, the equivalent of a month and a half of rain has fallen in Lyon,” the weather channel reported on Twitter.
Weather station ‘Météo 60’ confirms that a total of 83 millimeters of rain fell in two hours (1 millimeter of rain corresponds to 1 liter of water on a surface of 1 square meter). For comparison: in Belgium, the normal monthly precipitation total in June is between 60 and 70 millimeters.
“There was so much water,” a local resident testifies to the French news channel TF1. It would have been useful if we had a boat. “It was like a wall of rain and hail. You couldn’t see anything,” says another witness.
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