29 October 2000 Storm

Update 1 | Summary
Posting Date: November 1, 2000, 11:00:00 AM

A severe windstorm struck northwestern Europe early Monday morning, October 30, 2000. This was the first severe winter storm of the 2000-2001 season. Winds gusting up to 160 kph (100 mph) lashed parts of England, France, and the Netherlands before heading toward Scandinavia. At least 9 people are reported to have died. England bore much of the brunt of the storm, and the south of the country was brought to a virtual standstill as fallen trees and floods shut roads and forced cancellations of many trains. At least 2 tornadoes hit the south coast of England, badly damaging homes and other buildings. More than 40 rivers across England and Wales were placed on flood alert. At least 180,000 people were left without electricity in England and France. In the Netherlands, police reported that the storm felled many trees and damaged roofs. The high winds caused the cancellation of flights throughout the region and waves, swelling up to 7 meters (23 feet), disrupted shipping traffic and ferry service from France to Sweden, leaving thousands stranded and sinking a cargo ship. Flooding is expected to continue in parts of England and Norway. AIR meteorologists anticipated this storm late last week and began running forecasts of the system over the weekend using AIR’s numerical weather prediction (NWP) capabilities. AIR posted loss estimates on Sunday, 29 October, several hours before the storm struck; that is, the loss estimates posted on 29 October were generated before the occurrence of the storm and before actual wind speed data or damage reports were available. The AIR wind modeling team has now collected the actual observed wind speed data for this storm system and has run this data through the European extratropical cyclone model. As expected, the storm evolved as AIR forecasts indicated, and the final loss estimates for this storm are very close to Scenario 5 from the original forecast posting on 29 October. In this scenario, losses in the UK were estimated at about GBP 200 million. These loss estimates include those from the high winds that affected England on Saturday, 28 October. Because there is still some uncertainty with respect to the true meteorological characteristics of this storm we are still presenting five scenarios that represent a range of possible losses. You will note that the new scenarios show that severe winds are slightly less concentrated and the windfield is more widely spread out. In terms of losses, this translates into a wide area of very low levels of damage. In the current set of scenarios, losses in the UK range from GBP 200 to 250 million. Losses in France range from one half to losses equal to those in the UK. This wide range of loss estimates in France is due to uncertainty with respect to wind speed measurements near Charles DeGaulle airport. Losses in the Netherlands are much lower than in the forecast posting. New scenarios are now posted and are available on the Event Scenario page of this Web site. Please note that all loss estimates are denominated in Euros. Both CATMAP® and CATRADER® clients can download event sets representing the entire range of scenarios.

Update 1 | Downloads
Posting Date: November 1, 2000, 11:00:00 AM