'Hurricane' sweeps across Europe

[Meso]

WHAT!? Hurricane? Maybe hurricane force winds but this can't be a hurricane... Can it? It has a name... I`m rather confused..
___________________________________________________________

BERLIN, Germany (Reuters) -- Germans were told to stay indoors and many schools across the country closed early on Thursday as a rare hurricane bore down on the country, cutting air traffic at its biggest airport by half.

Germany's DWD meteorogical service said the storm "Kyrill" could generate winds of up to 180 km/h (112 mph) in high and exposed areas and as much as 130 km/h in lower-lying regions.

"What's unusual about this storm is that it will affect the whole country and not just certain zones," said Christoph Hartmann, a spokesman for the DWD in Offenbach.

The northwest of Germany would be the first to feel the full impact of Kyrill from early afternoon, before the storm swept across the rest of the country and moved eastwards into Poland, the Czech Republic and northern Austria, the DWD said.

Rain would likely continue into the weekend in affected areas, as the storm's force gradually dissipated, it added.

As Germans were warned on the radio and television to keep their cars away from trees and to stay indoors, authorities in states stretching across the length and breadth of the country said many schools were closing early due to Kyrill's arrival.

Rescue services around Germany said they had mobilized extra staff to prepare for potential flooding and destructive winds.

German airline Deutsche Lufthansa said it expected numerous flight cancellations and delays on Thursday, while Frankfurt airport said takeoffs and landings were cut by half.

Germany was not the only country hit. British and French rescue services rushed to pick up sailors forced to abandon a container ship after it began sinking in stormy waters in the Channel.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe/01 ... index.html

[gord]

Nah, inaccuarate wording, hurricane force winds it should have been. Impossible to get proper hurricanes in this part of the world.

But we're in the middle of it right now, and it is very bad...i've posted this in the other thread, but here is alink to the BBC news story on it from a British point of view:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6272193.stm

[Yarrah]

Owk, that was scary. I had college today, and 5 minutes after I left the room, a crane crashed into the building, demolishing the part of the building I was just in. In the end, 6 people were injured, some of them pretty badly.


Source: De Volkskrant

Some more storm news from The Netherlands:

> Amsterdam Central Station and Utrecht Central Station (two most important trainstations in the country) have been closed. Train services have stopped in the entire country.

> Several highways have been closed because of flooding or life-threatening conditions

> The government warned people not to venture outside anymore (first time they did that, as far as I know)

> A ship has breached an oil pipe-line in the port of Rotterdam. Several other ships are in danger of sinking

More news will surely follow, since the worst part has yet to reach the mainland.

[gord]

Take care out there Yarrah, the worst part is over us right now, and there are stories coming in from all over. In the last hour, its been announced that there are now 4 dead in the UK due to this storm. 3 due to traffic incidents with trees falling on cars or lorries falling over in the wind and the 4th with a wall falling on top of a woman in Manchester.

Its really bad out there, i can see neighbours fences falling to the ground, all kinds of stuff blowing up the street.

When the cold front clears and the skies start to brighten, thats when you'll see the really damaging winds.

One of the UK's main recording sire, XC weather is down today, (on all days to be down!) so its a bit more difficult to find out the wind gusts being recorded.

[gord]

Oh, and wow, what a lucky escape...feel sorry for those still inside the building though.

Goes to show just what these weather systems can do...we've known it was coming for a few days now but you just can't take everything into account when preparing can you?

[Yarrah]

If you can beat the overload the KNMI-website is having right now, there's a section where the latest data is available: http://www.knmi.nl/actueel/index.html

Strange, the sun is shining right now and the wind isn't blowing anymore...

-edit- I'm so happy all of our powerlines are under the ground.

[gord]

Its coming Yarrah, belive me...its coming!

Are you on the coast of the Netherlands, or inland?

[gord]

Gusts of 84mph coming in from Crosby, north west England.

Humberside on the east coast is getting gusts of 74mph, so this is affecting all of central to southern England from coast to coast.

Highest gust i can find overall is 99mph on the isle of Wight.

Some breaking news, Manchester airport is suspending all in bound flights this afteroon.

[Yarrah]

@ gord: Right in the middle of the country.

Current situation:



The wind is really picking up right now, forecasted to reach 10 to 11 beaufort in 30 minutes.

I had to switch the lights on in my room because it became too dark.

-edit- 13 rooftiles less on my roof

[isobar]

You all take care out there, and keep us posted on what's going on. I'm having a hard time finding news about it.

[Yarrah]

More news from The Netherlands:

> 3 casualties
> Thousands of passengers are stranded in the main train stations since all the train services have been cancelled
> 6 people injured when a bus was blown off the road and hit a tree
> several important bridges have been closed down, causing more traffic jams (in the afternoon, there was a total of 500 km traffic jams)
> ir. Wouda steam-powerd mill, UNESCO world heritage, had to help keep the low lying parts in the northern regions dry
> People in high-rise buildings in Rotterdam have been ecacuated, because parts of the buildings were blown off
> Dikes and sluices are being guarded (10 feet storm surge)

Right now, the most intense winds (Beaufort 10) can be found in the Northern part of the Netherlands. In the center (where I live), the average winds are 6 beaufort, but gusts can reach 130 km/h. I think the worst part is over.

[gord]

Finally calming down here now. Reports from all over the country that it is much calmer. The whole think is moving out to the north sea..and the clearing up can begin.

very sadly, the 7 people are now confirmed dead in the UK...tragically including a 2 year old boy crushed by a falling wall in north west London.

Main news story with some links to others on the right hand side here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6272193.stm

Buxton up on the moors of the peak district is said to have reported a gust of 106mph this afternoon.

[P.K.]

Can someone remove the second image? That is a supercell taken by Mike Hollingshead in the USA a few years back.

So far 8 are dead in the UK. Highest winds in my area were 81km/h gusting to 124km/h, pretty significant for NW London.

The Free University of Berlin have given this low the name "Kyrill."

[JonathanBelles]

so this was actully named? how? what list? was this expected because i hadnt heard of any thing forecast.

[P.K.]

The list is here. http://www.met.fu-berlin.de/adopt-a-vortex/tief/#aktuell

This has been all over the news here for the last few days so yes it was forecast.

[Yarrah]

Indeed, KNMI issued a warning yesterday and this was first mentioned on monday.

Anyway, total deathtoll here has reached 4. It also seems the storm surge in the north is a bit higher then expected; 12 feet already

PS: I removed that picture. I expected the national news supplier to double check the sources of the photo's they use, but it seems I was wrong.

[Bunkertor]

German railway nearly totally shut down. Railway-users put into hotels...rien ne va plus.
Hamburg facing most severe stormflood since 12 years. Highest gale at 200 kilometers/hour.
Schools & Kindergarden closed.
Bahn-CEO: Never witnessed such !

[JonathanBelles]

25 dead as storm batters Europe
POSTED: 5:09 p.m. EST, January 18, 2007

MSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) -- Gale force winds and heavy downpours hammered northern Europe on Thursday, killing 25 people and disrupting travel for tens of thousands.

The storms were among the fiercest to batter northern Europe in years, ripping off part of the roof at Lord's Cricket Ground in London, toppling trucks on Europe's busiest highway and forcing trains in Germany and the Netherlands to a virtual standstill.

By evening, weather related accidents had killed 25 people, including a 2 year-old boy hit by falling brick from a crumpled wall in London.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's plane landed in gusts of up to 130 kph (77 mph).in London for a meeting with Prime Minister Tony Blair after she cut short a visit to Berlin to avoid the worsening weather.

"It's not often you get winds of that sort of strength that far inland," said John Hammond, the spokesman for Britain's weather office. "(Rice) did well to land there, I wouldn't have fancied doing that."

German meteorologists dubbed the storm "Cyril" and recorded gusts of up to 191 kph (118 mph), forcing dozens of flight cancellations, prompting the national railroad to suspend services and shutting schools.

"We are still at a standstill nationwide," with only a few trains running, said Hans-Georg Zimmermann, the spokesman of the national railroad, Deutsche Bahn. In remarks on n-tv television, he said "significant" disruption could be expected on Friday when services resume.

At Berlin's central railway station, Luise Mazur Reinhold, 79, sat disconsolately on a station bench.

"What should we do now? They threw us off the train 10 minutes ago," said Mazur, from southern Poland, who had hoped to travel to Hamburg to celebrate her husband's 85th birthday with friends. "We had invited all these people to his 85th birthday, but now we just can't get there."

Traffic on the Eurostar, the train service that runs under the English Channel and connects London and Paris, was suspended after an electrical cable holder fell onto the tracks near the northern French city of Lille, France's national railway company said.

In London, harried commuters struggled through a gauntlet of road closures caused by falling debris blown from glass-paneled office buildings and medieval churches. The city's slender Millennium Bridge was closed after the suspension structure began swaying dangerously in the wind.

Rail stations across London were closed. The evening commute melted into chaos.

"First the buses couldn't cross the bridge because of the wind, and now this," said Paul Richards, 26, a real estate agent attempting to reach London Bridge station.

He swore, and turned back to retrace his steps across the wind-swept bridge.

Traffic on the M-25 highway around London, the busiest in Europe, was backed up for miles (kilometers) after three trucks were knocked over by a single gust of wind in the early afternoon.

Traffic accidents accounted for many of the fatalities, including one in Shropshire, England, where a 54-year-old man identified as Richard Heard, managing director of Birmingham Airport, died after his car ran into a fallen branch that pierced the windshield.

Ten deaths were reported in the United Kingdom while five people died in Germany, four in the Netherlands; three in the Czech Republic and one in France and two in Belgium.

In Amsterdam, cyclists who ventured out despite warnings from the fire department were blown over or, in some cases, blown backward.

City workers trying to divert cars from fallen trees watched as the wind swept their traffic cones away. The fire department warned people to stay indoors to avoid falling roof tiles and branches, and the city's historic canals were littered with fallen trash barrels, piles of toppled bikes and dozens of broken umbrellas.

In Utrecht, Netherlands, a construction crane toppled onto a university building, crumpling the roof and injuring six.

In the northern Netherlands, authorities also patrolled dikes as they were battered by seas whipped up by the storm. There were no reports of dike breaches.

London's Heathrow Airport, Europe's largest, canceled 280 flights. Other major airports including Frankfurt, Munich, Amsterdam and Vienna reported delays and cancellations.

At sea, coast guard ships and naval helicopters rescued the crew of a British container ship damaged and drifting in the English Channel, Britain's Coast Guard said.

Ferries were canceled or delayed in Britain, Ireland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Finland.

In Ireland and Latvia, winds kept rescue crews from helping other ships damaged or missing after storms earlier this week: seven fishermen from Ireland, Poland and Ukraine are missing and presumed dead off Ireland's coast, while Latvian rescuers were unable to attempt to salvage a Greek-owned cargo ship that ran aground Tuesday off the Baltic port of Ventspils and has been leaking oil.

A ship burst loose from its moorings near Rotterdam and smashed an oil pipeline, leaking around 1,600 cubic meters (10,000 barrels) of oil. The stench reached The Hague, 30 kilometers (20 miles) away, Dutch media said.

On land, residents along the North Sea coast were warned to expect storm swells up to 3.5 meters (11.5 feet) higher than normal.

Austria's national weather service said storm winds had the potential to reach 170 kph (105 mph) at higher altitudes in the Alps, and officials cautioned skiers and snowboarders to get off the mountains and seek shelter well before nightfall.

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

[Tstormwatcher]

So i'm guessing that germany gives all strong low pressure systems names?

Sounds like it was quite a blow.

[JonathanBelles]

So i'm guessing that germany gives all strong low pressure systems names?

Sounds like it was quite a blow.

thats what i was thinking, and high pressures too.