Unheard of in Agen!
130 mm of rain fell in less than two hours in the Lot-et-Garonne prefecture.
That's the equivalent of two months of rain.
The department, like 31 others, had been placed on orange vigilance earlier in the day by Météo France.
The previous record in Agen, Météo France reports, was 74 mm of rain in 24 hours on February 12, 1990.
🌧️🌧️🌧️ Exceptional precipitation currently at #Agen
➡️ 80.5 mm recorded in one hour (La Garenne station).
➡️ The 100mm has just been exceeded on this same station.
ℹ️ By way of comparison, the previous record on this station in 24 hours was 74mm (02/12/1990).
pic.twitter.com/GAo0vm6z1Z
- Météo-France (@meteofrance) September 8, 2021
As evidenced by many photos and videos posted on social networks, the rain quickly flooded several streets.
"The city of Agen experienced a rainy episode of exceptional intensity with more than 2 meters of water in some streets," the town hall confirmed on Facebook.
“It went up extremely quickly.
We just had time to save our shoes, ”testified a local resident, whose ground floor was quickly flooded, to the newspaper Sud Ouest.
#agen #flooding water is coming at an incredible speed pic.twitter.com/lVGsL6Ylxq
- Mélanie Kieffer (@ TheStellina69) September 8, 2021
It's impressive !
#floods #Agen pic.twitter.com/Eh03LUWt4O
- ExoD (@ExoD__) September 8, 2021
#intemperie: in #agen, rue fon de raché is flooded #floods pic.twitter.com/mZFNwEhZ79
- Carine Caussieu (@carinecauss) September 8, 2021
"On the Boulevard de la République, a section reserved for pedestrians, two bubbling streams flowed thickly," Le Petit Bleu d'Agen recounts on its website.
Gutters ripped open under the Cornieres were transformed into veritable geysers.
We will have seen passers-by wearing plastic bags trying to cross these runoff anyhow ... "
Evacuation operations
The firefighters, quickly overwhelmed by calls, launched evacuation operations.
Relocation solutions also had to be offered to residents, explains Sud Ouest.
"It is an overflow of water in the networks which caused these floods", explained on BFM TV the first deputy mayor of Agen, Clémence Brandolin-Robert.
No watercourse overflowed.
Spotting operation to evacuate residents in the DRC, Water still has me.
#thunderstorms #agen #floods pic.twitter.com/UOL7yktTKI
- Yannick Boyer-Chenou (@Boy_yan_) September 8, 2021
According to Keraunos, who observes thunderstorms in France, "torrential rains affected a large portion of the extreme east of Aquitaine".
“In addition to the 130 mm in Agen, we can note 80 mm in Montflanquin (Lot-et-Garonne), 68 mm in Prayssas (Lot-et-Garonne), 65 mm in Villeneuve-sur-Lot (Lot-et-Garonne) , 61 mm in Gimont (Gers) ”, writes the observatory on Twitter.