Late Sunday evening, an active cold front crossed Belgium from west to east, with local thunderstorms, sleet and strong to very strong gusts.
A yellow warning is now in place for all provinces of Belgium for the passage of storm Franklin, meteorologist from the Royal Meteorological Institute (IRM), David Dehenauw, confirmed on Twitter. A yellow alert concerns gusts of 80 to 100 km/h.
An orange warning, for particularly strong winds of 101 to 130 km / h over a wide area, had been issued by the IRM for Sunday evening in the provinces of West and East Flanders, Antwerp. In the meantime, the strongest of the storm seems to have passed, but the forecast services do not exclude that substantial gusts remain possible and capable of causing damage or disruption of traffic.
The meteorologist notes that winds of 130 km/h were observed at Ostend airport, 108 km/h at Zeebrugge and 105 km/h at Stabroek.
The average wind speed exceeded 9 Beaufort at Westhinder, making Franklin officially a storm in Belgium.
Shorter gusts than Friday
This cold front has once once more made many residents fear the worst. For the coast and the west of the country, the gusts reached 100 to 125 km / h. Elsewhere in the country, their speed was estimated between 80 and 120 km/h.
The difference with Storm Eunice is that the strongest gusts were concentrated over a very short duration.
Enough to mobilize the emergency services and municipal services to intervene on the ground.
Many municipal authorities have decided to close their parks and cemeteries once more, sometimes until Tuesday morning to avoid any risk linked to strong winds.
The firefighters, on the front since Friday, carried out numerous interventions, in particular because of the trees that had fallen on the roads.
On the Infrabel side, the speed of trains was limited to 80 km / h from 7 p.m. Sunday in the provinces for which the IRM issued an orange wind warning, namely the two Flanders, Antwerp and Hainaut, as well than at the coast.
At the end of the evening, it was difficult to establish a quantified assessment of the damage. And the worst was yet to come since the forecasts estimated that the most violent gusts would take place between midnight and two o’clock in the morning.
