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The autumnal weather change leads to violent storms – in the north and south of Europe. The overview.
Where do storms occur? The storm is currently most intense in the North and Baltic Seas. The British weather service has already given the storm a name: Babet is the name of the storm. The storm is causing chaos on both sides of the North Sea – the sea is going crazy in Scotland and northern England as well as in Schleswig-Holstein and Denmark.
It will probably be some kind of historic event.
Hans Peter Wandler from the Danish Meteorological Institute told a daily newspaper: “It will probably be some kind of historical event,” Hans Peter Wandler from the Danish Meteorological Institute told the daily Ekstra Bladet. “But we have to wait until it is over to see whether it will be a two-year event or a 100-year event.”
The German Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency expects the peak of the severe storm surge for the Bay of Kiel and Lübeck on Friday afternoon and evening. In the Flensburg Fjord, water levels could rise up to 2 meters above mean high water, the office announced on its website. This is expected to be the highest water level there in more than 100 years.
The situation is particularly exceptional in Scotland. In Brechin the protective devices gave way around 4 a.m. The river level is 0.5 meters above the all-time high. “This is unprecedented,” reported the Angus local council on X (formerly Twitter).
A violent storm is also raging in southern France. There were power outages, road closures and school closures. The seafront promenade in Nice was closed due to high waves. The weather service Météo France issued the highest severe weather warning level, red, for the region.
Where were there fatalities? A woman in Edinburgh was swept away by a river and died. The 57-year-old woman’s body was found in a river in the Angus region, police said on Thursday evening. A 56-year-old was also killed by a tree in his van near the town of Forfar, the police announced on Friday. Several other people had to be evacuated in the Scottish capital. A man also died in flooding in Cleobury Mortimer, England.
Legend:
In Scotland, emergency workers went door to door to ask residents of hundreds of homes to leave their homes.
Keystone/ANDREW MILLIGAN
Where is traffic restricted? Around one in ten flights at Copenhagen Airport were canceled on Friday due to the storm over the Baltic Sea. The Scandlines ferry service between Germany and Denmark also had to be temporarily stopped. The reason is not high water, but deep water. The strong wind pushes the water away from the German coast, meaning that ferries cannot sail. A bridge near Norway’s second-largest city of Bergen has been closed for safety reasons, the local newspaper reported. Public transport has also been severely restricted in Sweden.
Why are there violent storms right now? With the change in temperature that occurs in autumn, it is normal for violent storms to occur at the border between warm and cold air. “Turbulent weather is part of this time of year,” explains Felix Blumer from SRF Meteo. The storms are both expressions of the same phenomenon, but not directly connected.