At least four have been killed as violent storms have battered the UK, the Netherlands, Sweden and parts of northern France, cutting off power and felling trees and scaffolding.
The storm swept southern England, killing a 17-year-old girl when a tree smashed through the trailer home she was staying in. A 50-year-old was also killed in his car when it was crushed by a falling tree in Watford, north of London, and in Amsterdam, a woman was killed when a tree collapsed on top of her in the city.
A woman in her 50s was swept out to sea off France’s northern coast after being carried away by a wave. Emergency services are mounting a rescue operation.
A teenage boy is also missing and believed to be drowned after being swept out to sea while playing in the surf in Newhaven on England’s south coast Sunday. A search was initially begun for the 14-year-old, but the rough sea conditions forced his potential rescuers to suspend their mission. The Maritime and Coastguard Agency said the operation had now become one of search and recovery.
Flood alerts have been issued nationwide, with 132 warnings in place across England and Wales. Up to 270,000 homes across the UK were left without power in the wake of the storm, while in northwest France some 75,000 homes were left without power or electricity.
The port of Dover in southeast England was closed, two cross-channel passenger ferry services suspended mid-crossing, and the Eurostar high-speed rail service, which goes under the Channel, was out of action until 7:00 am GMT Monday. Waves as high as 25 feet lashed England’s southern coastline as the storm began.
Heathrow Airport, Europe’s busiest air transportation hub, was forced to cancel some 130 flights on account of hurricane-force winds, which reached speeds of up to 99 mile per hour (159 kilometers/hour) on England’s south coast.
The possibility of further falling trees and debris has thrown public transportation into chaos with people fearing dangerous driving conditions. A double decker bus keeled over in Suffolk, on England’s east coast, a crane collapsed on the roof of Downing Street’s Cabinet Office and rail services faced delays and cancelations. Meteorologists described St. Jude as the worst storm to have struck the UK in years.
UK Meteorological Office spokesman Dan Williams told Reuters that the last storm on a similar scale, considering both time of year and regions struck, was in October 2002.
“The thing that’s unusual about this one is that most of our storms develop out over the Atlantic, so that they’ve done all their strengthening and deepening by the time they reach us,” Helen Chivers, another spokesperson for the Met Office, told Reuters. “This one is developing as it crosses the UK, which is why it brings the potential for significant disruption … and that doesn’t happen very often.”
The storm has also prompted the closure of two nuclear power reactors at Dungeness, on England’s southeast coast. Its operator, EDF Energy, stated that “the shutdown was weather-related. The plant reacted as it should and shut down safely.”
It added that unit availability was expected to stand at zero for the next seven days. The reactors were shut after power to the site was cut off.
In the Netherlands, a ‘red’ alert was announced by meteorologists for the regions of South Holland, Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Flevoland, Friesland and Groningen, with wind speeds of 140 kilometers reported. The red alert only happened once last year, and not at all in 2011. All traffic to Amsterdam was shut down, and fifty flights to the city’s Schiphol airport were cancelled. Winds were expected to near the 130 kph mark in the afternoon.
The Swedish Meteorological Institute has also been forced to warn that a potential Class 3 storm could be a “great danger to the public.” St Jude is expected to strike western and southern Sweden in the evening.
“One should preferably stay indoors,” Lisa Frost, a meteorologist with Sweden’s Meteorological and Hydrological Institute, told the Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet.
‘Worst in years’: St Jude storm wreaks havoc across N. Europe, at least 4 dead
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