Eight departments in northeastern France are still placed on orange alert for “floods”, Météo France announced in its bulletin on Friday.

The North, the Aisne, the Ardennes, the Marne, the Meuse, the Bas-Rhin, the Haut-Rhin and the Saône-et-Loire are concerned by this alert.

On the other hand, no department was, this Saturday morning, in orange rain or flooding vigilance.

This alert is valid until Saturday at 4 p.m.

"The weather is improving over the country this weekend, it is getting drier and hotter", indicates Météo France, which predicts a "still very busy sky from the Grand Est to Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes" on Saturday morning, but with "over the hours" clearings which "widen".

Record rainfall in Alsace

"A low risk of downpours persists in Alsace and the Vosges in the afternoon", according to the same source. In Alsace, the departments of Bas-Rhin and Haut-Rhin also remain vigilant. Some showers are possible Friday evening and Saturday evening, before the return of good weather on Sunday and Monday. "Strong reduction in rainfall" also in Meuse, with "a recession started on all the rivers, with the exception of the downstream Chiers which is currently reaching its peak of flood", indicated in the morning the prefecture in a press release, according to which several highways remain closed, however. Several villages also remained isolated, but firefighters were on standby.

Roads also remain closed in Moselle and Meurthe-et-Moselle, departments in yellow vigilance, according to the Departmental Councils.

“A rise in water levels” Friday afternoon was also announced by the Moselle prefecture on “the rivers of the Orne”.

Contacted in the morning, other prefectures in the region did not report any particular activity, while the previous days had been marked by heavy rainfall, as in recent months.

“In Alsace, it has rained more for six months than in the whole of 2020,” according to Météo-France.

The Strasbourg-Entzheim station, "fairly representative of the region, recorded 564 mm of precipitation between January 1 and July 18, against 507 mm throughout the past year".

Train traffic disrupted

The abundant rains in recent days have caused disruptions in rail and river transport in eastern France. TGV and TER traffic is interrupted between Thionville and Luxembourg until Sunday evening inclusive. River traffic on the Rhine has also been interrupted since Tuesday "and probably until Sunday evening or Monday", from Birsfelden (Switzerland), to Germersheim (Germany), according to Dominique Rozier, head of the Rhine Alert Center and nautical information from Gambsheim (Caring).

The flow of the Rhine is currently "almost 4,000 cubic meters per second".

“Normally around Strasbourg at this period it is 1,000 to 1,200 m3 per second, there we are almost four times more,” continued the head of Caring.

In Europe, the bad weather killed more than 100 people, most of them in Germany, where help continues to search for many missing people.

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