The second major storm in three days smashed through northern Europe on Friday, killing at least eight people as high winds felled trees, cancelled train services and ripped sections off the roof of London’s O2 Arena.
The UK weather service said a gust provisionally measured at 122 mph (196 kph), thought to be the strongest ever in England was recorded on the Isle of Wight as Storm Eunice swept across the country’s south.
The weather system, known as Storm Zeynep in Germany, is now pushing into the European mainland, prompting high wind warnings in Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark and Germany.
The storm caused mayhem with travel in Britain, shutting the English Channel port of Dover, closing bridges linking England and Wales and halting most trains in and out of London.
At least three people died in Britain, including a man in southern England killed when a car hit a tree, another man whose windshield was struck by debris in northwest England and a woman in her 30s who died in London when a tree fell on a car, police said.
In the Netherlands, firefighters said three people were killed by falling trees in and around Amsterdam, and in neighbouring Belgium an elderly man died when high winds pushed him into a canal in Ypres. In County Wexford, Ireland, a local government worker was killed as he responded to the scene of a fallen tree, the local council said.
Eunice is the second named storm to hit Europe this week, with the first storm killing at least five people in Germany and Poland. Peter Inness, a meteorologist at the University of Reading in England, attributed the storms to an unusually strong jet stream over the eastern Atlantic Ocean, with winds close to 200 mph (321 kph) at high altitudes.
A strong jet stream like this can act like a production line for storms, generating a new storm every day or two, Inness said. There have been many occasions in the recent past when two or more damaging storms have passed across the UK and other parts of Europe in the space of a few days.”
The forecast led British authorities to take the unusual step of issuing “red” weather warnings indicating a danger to life for parts of southern England, including London, and Wales that lasted through early afternoon. A lower level amber warning for gusts up to 80 mph covers the whole of England from 5 am to 9 pm.
