The United Kingdom has been hit by Storm Babet, which killed three people and caused severe flooding in Scotland and England before moving toward Scandinavia on Friday.
Heavy rain and strong winds have hit a large area from Ireland to the north of the UK since Wednesday and a red alert is in place until Saturday in north-east Scotland, where “exceptional rainfall” is expected to continue.
AFP
In this particularly affected region, the body of a 57-year-old woman was found in a river in the Angus coastal region between Edinburgh and Aberdeen and a 56-year-old man was killed by a falling tree vehicle, police said.
A man in his 60s was also found dead on Friday morning after becoming trapped in the water of a stream that flowed into a road in Cleobury Mortimer in Shropshire, central England, West Mercia Area Police said.
AFP
Leeds Bradford Airport, located in the north of England, announced that it would be closing its doors in a message posted on X (formerly Twitter). In the early afternoon, a passenger plane from Corfu, Greece, veered off the runway while attempting to land. According to a spokesman, there were no injuries.
Evacuations
Hundreds of people have had to evacuate their homes since Thursday because of flooding, such as in the Scottish town of Brechin, where the coastguard went door-to-door on Thursday evening to urge residents to leave their homes, an AFP photographer noted.
“The river level is 4.4 meters above its normal level. This is unprecedented,” commented Angus X councilor.
AFP
“It’s absolutely terrible,” Jill Scott, a local elected official, told the PA news agency, referring to people “trapped” in certain areas of this city. “The boats (rescuers) are trying to reach them but can’t because the current is too strong.”
Many schools in the region remained closed Friday, roads and several rail lines were disrupted and more than 20,000 homes suffered power outages, the vast majority of which have since been restored.
AFP
In Scotland, six professional football games scheduled for Saturday were also canceled.
In Ireland, the first country hit by Babet on Wednesday, hundreds of buildings were inundated in Cork (south), where municipal officials reported unprecedented flooding in at least thirty years.
“Unusual”
The Met Office has issued an orange and yellow warning for several areas in north and central England and north Wales, where flooding is already being reported by local authorities.
AFP
They warned that some localities could be isolated for several days due to severe flooding.
“This is not the usual fall weather. This is an exceptional event and we are likely to continue to experience significant impacts with possible further flooding and property damage,” warned Andy Page from the Met Office.
AFP
The storm is now heading towards Denmark and Sweden, where weather services are expecting severe flooding.
“The wind has already started to get stronger and is expected to (…) reach its peak, especially at night,” Ida Dahlström from the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI) told AFP.
SMHI and the Danish Meteorological Agency DMI have both issued warnings for heavy rain, flooding, strong winds and squalls.
77 flights to and from Copenhagen Airport in Denmark were canceled, he wrote on X.
As a precautionary measure, several ferry operators have suspended their connections between Denmark and Germany and will no longer operate the usual routes between Sweden and Germany and between Sweden and Poland.