Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Watch drone footage of the swollen river Seine in Paris

Riverside homes and businesses in Paris are on high alert as the swollen River Seine threatens to overflow its banks. Leaks had started to appear in some basements on Friday, while some residents on the city's outskirts were forced to travel by boat through waterlogged streets. But the world's most visited museum was on high alert on Saturday, along with the Musee d'Orsay and Orangerie galleries, with the lower level of the Louvre's Islamic arts wing closed to visitors. A health centre in the northwestern Parisian suburbs, where 86 patients were receiving care, had to be evacuated Friday. Bourlier was among the lucky ones: As of Thursday night, 400 people had been evacuated from homes in the Paris region, and a thousand faced power cuts, according to the police prefecture. The Vigicrues flooding agency scaled back its peak predictions for the river in the capital, saying it will top out at 5.8 to 6 metres (19 to 19.7 feet) between Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning, compared with 6.2 metres previously. The river reached 5.7 metres at 9:00 am (local time) today, more than four metres above its normal height, causing headaches for commuters as well as people living near its overflowing banks. Image copyright EPA Image caption Perching seagulls are barely out of the water now

In the prestigious 16th Arrondissement (district), some basements in residential buildings were slowly being inundated. Joao de Macedo, a janitor at a residential building in Paris’s upscale 16th arrondissement, said: “There are six studios in the basement, and we’ve had to set up blocks outside to keep the windows from breaking and covering everything in water.”

The December-January period is now the third wettest since data collection began in 1900, according to France’s meteorological service. Inside the studios, tables and dressers have been lifted off the floor as water seeps through the walls, the agency says. In the floods of June 2016, which killed four people in France, it peaked at 20 feet.”

“Although some experts said it was hard to determine whether global warming was behind the current flood, others warned that a worrying pattern was emerging. The December-January period is now the third-wettest on record since data collection began in 1900, according to France's meteorological service. All boat traffic on the Seine in Paris and upstream has been stopped, keeping tourists off the capital's famed sightseeing boats. "We've been reassured, it will keep the water level high but not increase it," said Francois Duquesne of the Vigicrues floods agency, though he warned of the risk for more rain next week. But even once the water levels start to recede, forecasters say it will be a slow process, since much of the ground in northern France is already waterlogged. A central portion of the RER C train line has been shut until the end of the month, and the government activated a plan that could let it relocate work from some ministries if the situation worsens. In Paris the Seine flows through a deep channel, limiting the potential flooding damage to riverside structures. But several areas on the outskirts of the capital are under water, such as the southern suburb of Villeneuve-Saint-Georges, where some residents were getting around by boat and dozens have been evacuated from their homes.
Riverside homes and businesses in Paris are on high alert as the swollen River Seine threatens to overflow its banks.