Exceptional weather has hit the United Kingdom. Storm Babet caused significant flooding and left two dead in Scotland before heading towards the Scandinavian countries. Heavy rain and strong winds have battered a large area from Ireland to the north of the UK since Wednesday, and a red alert remains in force until Saturday in northeast Scotland where “exceptional rainfall » are still planned.
In this particularly affected region, the body of a 57-year-old woman was found in a river in the coastal region of Angus, between Edinburgh and Aberdeen, and a 56-year-old man was killed by a falling tree. on his vehicle, police said.
Hundreds of evacuations
Hundreds of people have had to evacuate their homes since Thursday because of the floods, such as in the town of Brechin, where the coast guards went door to door Thursday evening to ask residents to leave their homes, noted a photographer from the AFP.
“The protections at Brechin failed around 4 a.m. and the river level is 4.4 meters above its normal level. This is unprecedented,” Angus local council said on X (formerly Twitter). “It’s absolutely horrible,” Jill Scott, local elected official, told the PA agency, referring to people “trapped” in certain neighborhoods of the city. ” The boats [des secouristes] try to reach them, but cannot because the current is too strong.”
Head to Denmark and Sweden
The storm is now heading towards Denmark and Sweden where meteorologists are expecting heavy flooding. “The wind has already started to gain strength and (this) is expected to peak (…) especially during the night,” Ida Dahlström, meteorologist at the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI) told AFP. . SMHI and Danish weather agency DMI have both issued warnings for heavy rain, floods, strong winds and gusts.
Seventy-seven flights to and from Copenhagen Airport in Denmark were canceled, he wrote on X. Several ferry operators suspended their services between Denmark and Denmark as a precaution. Germany, and will not operate the usual routes between Sweden and Germany and between Sweden and Poland.