Violent wind gusts and giant waves crashing over highways. A storm hit southern Russia and the annexed Crimean peninsula, causing major power cuts, local authorities said on Monday. Dubbed “storm of the century” and “mega-storm” by Russian media, bad weather began to rage on Sunday, according to emergency services.
In the Krasnodar region, which is home to the seaside resorts of Sochi and Anapa, very popular with Russians, hundreds of trees as well as numerous metal constructions equipping the beaches were uprooted by the wind on Sunday night to Monday, causing injuries, indicated the local branch of the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations.
Waves up to 8 meters high
In Vitiazevo, near Anapa, the storm caused the grounding of a large cargo ship flying the flag of Belize, the Blue Shark, according to the same source. In Sochi, bad weather disrupted rail traffic due to trees falling on the railway tracks.
In Novorossiysk, also in the Krasnodar region, the Caspian Pipeline Consortium announced that it was suspending oil loading and sheltering its tankers due to “extremely unfavorable weather conditions”: wind gusts of up to 24 meters per second and waves up to 8 meters high.
500,000 people deprived of electricity in Crimea
In Crimea, the Black Sea has overflowed onto highways, with Russian television broadcasting images of waves crashing over cars trying to drive through the water. The governor of Crimea, Sergei Aksionov, announced on Telegram that he had declared Monday a non-working day due to bad weather. This storm caused power cuts, leaving around 500,000 people in Crimea without electricity, according to an advisor to Sergei Aksionov, Oleg Krioutchkov, quoted by Russian news agencies.
In Sevastopol, more than 500 marine animals were killed in the flooding of the local aquarium caused by the storm, city governor Mikhail Razvozhayev wrote on Telegram. According to him, the weather forecast is hardly reassuring at the moment, with rain, snow and wind gusts of up to 30 meters per second expected in Crimea on Monday.