200km/hour winds batter europe two days in a row

Britain and Germany got the worst hit with 46 deaths. but personally i always think they downgrade death counts so as not to cause panic.

Last Updated: Friday, January 19, 2007 | 2:11 PM ET
CBC News
The worst storm in years is pounding Northern Europe, killing at least 46 people, knocking out power to millions and bringing most travel to a standstill.

As the storm moved east on Friday, forecasters reported winds of 200 km/h.

At least 14 people were reported dead in Britain alone, including a two-year-old boy who was killed by a falling wall in London.

Link

thats a pretty intense storm... very unusual. its sad to hear even children are caught in the danger zone... thoughts?

i wonder how long before computer modeling can predict these starnge weather patterns properly.

no winds lin london today, we only got 1 day of it.

i belive germany was one of the places hardest hit with two day sin a row. almost 20 deaths there....

Originally posted by andy1033
i wonder how long before computer modeling can predict these starnge weather patterns properly.

no winds lin london today, we only got 1 day of it.

They had a warning, which is why only 20 people died in Germany. BC Had similar weather though I'm not sure if the winds topped 200 km/h. That is just insane.

Just to put things in perspective.....

1,205 people have died today, and continue to die everyday from smoking.
8,461 per week

To put it in more perspective, 35000 lives were lost in the Heat Wave Europe had a little while back. If this storm had of struck with absolutely no warning, many more than 20 people would have died. Had it struck a 3rd world nation, that 20 would most likely have been 200 or even 2000.

[edit on 20-1-2007 by sardion2000]

Originally posted by R3KR
Just to put things in perspective.....

1,205 people have died today, and continue to die everyday from smoking.
8,461 per week

Bad perspective as people choose to smoke. They don't choose their weather.

alot of people are waiting to see if global warming really happens and it gets skin burning hot then they will start using clean energy. but this is something that should be prevented not treated.

all these bizarre events as of late have "cheesy hollywood apocalypse film" written all over them

At least we didn't have a repeat of of the 1953 North Sea Flood though. It could easily happen again, it was caused by high winds and a particularly high tide.

waterlevel locally exceeded 5.6 meters above mean sea level.

Thats quite high, thats enough to flood a lot of the eastern region of England (were it not local). With Global warming and increasing sea levels, we'll soon perhaps be seeing more of it.

Officially, 1,835 people were killed in the Netherlands, mostly in the south-western province of Zeeland. 307 were killed in the United Kingdom, in the counties of Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex.

So you see, we weren't that badly off.

Storms like these have been constant all winter. Here in Ireland, we get 2-3 Atlantic storm Force 10-12 storms a season.
It is has been 2 a week..Thursday was bad for us but not as bad as NYE..
On Thursday on my way back from shopping in another town. We passed 4 articulated lorries that had over turned. (4 mile stretch of motorway)
In gusts there were fencing posts (4x4's) about 6 feet long being blown about like matchsticks.
Frightening and the only reason I was out and about was because the met office said storm wouldn't hit until late afternoon. This was 11am.

Frankly it makes me so angry. This was published today in the Guardian.co.uk Global warming: the final verdict and they somehow manage to make it all sound a bit blahzay towards the end. Its the issues around permafrost Methane threatens to bake humanity like Turkeys in an Oven: Global Warming could accelerate out of control 20 times current trends which alarm me the most understated in the media and not just confined to Siberia, the thawing of the permafrost’s on the planet will potentially do far worse for climate change then we mere humans could even begin.

And then there's the continuous rubbish turned out by the media who say all this will happen over the next 100 years. 100 years! Oh well not a problem then I probably won’t even see the worse of it [sarcasm]. I think the truth is simple, they don’t know, they got it wrong before probably more to do with dogma and career pursuits rather then just getting it plain wrong [I have faith in scientists for sure]. But they don’t know everything, and like all of us, can be just as easily caught out by turn of, and unforeseen events.

Originally posted by Sacreligion
all these bizarre events as of late have "cheesy hollywood apocalypse film" written all over them

I would have to agree.

people need to remember that it creates extremes in weather, and the forcasters are finding it harder to project much more than 1 day or something.

Germany calls these intense low pressure systems orkantiefs, which translates to hurricane-lows. This low was also named Kyrill and is the worst storm since 1990.



Photos: Damage by Orkan Kyrill

[edit on 21-1-2007 by Regenmacher]

I cannot remember such a hurricane (according to the force of the winds cat. 2 or 3) in Europe before.

Do you?

There was a smaller, but similar devastating one on August 20, 2006 in Budapest, Hungary, right under our National Fireworks Parade. The "great" Hungarian Government have received the warning, but they didn't share it with the people, leaded by unknown reasons, while they knew what will be the consequences. The only "luck" was that the hurricane like storm was only for 20 minutes. But under that time, around 5 or 6 have been killed and many injured. But before that... yes. There was one similar around 1998, but that one not claimed any victims and that one was quite smaller, then the storm of August 20, 2006.

For our luck, that storm, what was on the last week it's already lost from the strength over Austria and when it's arrived to Hungary it's simply passed over our country without any sort of greater consequences.

Originally posted by Ptolomeo
I cannot remember such a hurricane (according to the force of the winds cat. 2 or 3) in Europe before. Do you?

I would say the wind storms Lothar and Martin of 1999 are the last big weather event like this. Although they have been saying that Daria (1990) also known as the Burns' Day storm ($4 Billion euros of damage with 170kph winds) is the most like Kyrill...so flip a coin, I'll let you decide.

More here: European windstorm Wiki

[edit on 21-1-2007 by Regenmacher]