European Winter Storm Klaus

Update 1 | Summary
Posting Date: January 26, 2009, 2:30:00 PM

Winter storm Klaus swept out of the Atlantic and across southern France and northern Spain Saturday, tearing off roofs, toppling electrical and telephone towers, and downing hundreds of thousands of trees. At least 25 people died as a result of the storm. By Monday, rivers had burst their banks across the southwest of France, leaving many fields and roads submerged and impassable. Rail and air services are expected to resume normal operation today. Weather officials warn that floods are likely throughout the area and forecast new storms for the region. Klaus is the worst winter storm to hit France since Martin, which followed a similar, but more northerly path in late December of 1999, when it caused the deaths of 90 people. Winter storm Klaus had a central pressure of 967 millibars on Saturday morning, January 24. As it moved across southern France, the storm's cold front extended southward and raked across the Pyrenees and northern Spain. According to METAR observations, three-second gusts reached up to 139 km/h in Biarritz, France, and up to 111 km/h in Barcelona, Spain, before the storm entered the Mediterranean and moved toward Corsica. Most of the deaths occurred in Spain, among them four children who were killed when a sports center collapsed after its roof was blown off by Klaus’s winds. Across northern Spain on Saturday thousands of residents had been evacuated from their homes because of wildfires that had been intensified by the storm's high winds—and also by new fires caused by knocked-down power lines. On Monday the wildfires were brought under control. By mid-day, however, some 50,000 homes still remained cut off from power. Over the weekend, Spanish troops were mobilized to help with clean-up operations and restoring electricity. On Sunday, the bullet-train link between Madrid and Barcelona was restored; service into France is expected on Monday. In France, nearly 1,000 soldiers have been sent to the Bordeaux region alone to help with rescue and clean-up efforts. At the height of the storm, some 1.7 million households were without power, and by mid-day Monday more than half a million remained without power. Although more than 3,000 French utility workers—assisted by additional teams from England, Germany, and Portugal—are working to restore power, the chairman of France's energy group, EDF, indicated that it may take a week before service is fully restored. The main Bordeaux-Paris rail line was running on Monday, but many routes remain down and the state rail company, SNCF, said it had 1,000 workers repairing overhead power cables and removing trees from rail lines. Also, 3,000 technicians are working to restore telephone service to 200,000 fixed-line and mobile customers throughout the area. The regions of Gironde and Landes in southern France, one of Europe's largest forest areas, were hard hit by the strong winds. Forestry officials say that more than half the trees in the area, where thousands of people rely on the timber industry for a living, appear to have been toppled. The AIR meteorology team is currently running simulations of winter storm Klaus using the latest available observational data. Clients will be notified when the results of these simulations become available. Additionally, AIR has sent two survey teams to conduct on-the-ground observations.

Update 1 | Downloads
Posting Date: January 26, 2009, 2:30:00 PM