2023-12-25 15:22:08
Storms and floods cut off power to thousands of households in the Czech Republic and Slovakia on Sunday and Monday and made evacuations necessary in several parts of the country. According to weather services and fire departments, the flood situation remained tense on Monday, especially on the Elbe and smaller northern Czech rivers near the borders with Saxony and Poland. There were warnings of further capricious weather in Germany.
Around 12,000 households in the Czech Republic were temporarily without electricity, including 3,700 on Monday. In Slovakia, the number of households without electricity increased from 7,000 on Sunday to 9,000 on Monday, the TASR news agency reported. In Slovakia, important power lines also run through difficult-to-access forest and mountain regions, where persistent snowstorms have hampered repair work. Fallen trees also blocked numerous roads and railway connections in both countries.
In Mrakotin u Telce in southern Bohemia, 20 houses had to be evacuated due to an impending dam failure. In other Czech regions, remote houses outside the town centers were also evacuated. On Saturday, the Czech fire brigades recorded around 2,000 missions. Fallen trees and flooded cellars were usually the cause.
Heavy snowfall that then turned into rain, as well as a sharp rise in temperature on Sunday that melted the snow, also caused flooding in Slovakia. In the capital Bratislava, streets and parking lots near the banks of the Danube and March as well as underpasses in the city center were flooded. The weather service SHMU and the fire department said there is currently no serious danger to the residential areas of the city’s population.
Due to persistent heavy rain, the authorities continued to warn of floods in several parts of Germany on Christmas Day. The German Weather Service spoke on Monday of the “danger of flooding in many streams and rivers,” which was “in some cases significant.” The Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency (BSH) issued storm surge warnings for Bremen and Hamburg.
According to the German Weather Service, there is heavy, continuous rain in many low mountain ranges and strong thaws in the Ore Mountains. Lower Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia, Rhineland-Palatinate, Hesse and Saxony are particularly affected. The weather situation might also lead to flooded streets and landslides.
The Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency (BSH) expected the storm surge mark of 1.5 meters above mean high water (MHW) to be clearly exceeded by two meters in Bremen in the early followingnoon. In Hamburg, the authorities assumed a level of 1.5 to two meters around 3 p.m. However, the BSH did not expect severe storm surges. On the Lower Saxony North Sea coast, the values in Wilhelmshaven on Monday reportedly remained below the storm surge mark.
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