Europe gets off to stormy start to new year

Europe has had a tumultuous start to the new year with extreme weather conditions being experienced across the continent, causing floods, power cuts and transport chaos.

Scandinavia was particularly hard hit. Even by the usual standards of the northern region, the temperature was particularly low, with Swedish news agency TT reporting that a reading of — 43.6 C recorded in Swedish Lapland was the country's lowest January temperature in 25 years.

Bridges and schools were shut because of the extreme conditions. And in Denmark, the police advised motorists against unnecessary journeys because of the safety risks.

Siberian winds caused record-low temperatures in the Russian capital Moscow, and the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were also affected.

Further west, the problem was not the temperature but the high winds of Storm Henk, with thousands of households across the United Kingdom having a cold and dark start to the new year because of storm-related power disruption and widespread flooding. There was at least one fatality when a falling tree hit a car in Gloucestershire County in the west of England.

ITV News reported that the roof had been blown off an observation pod on the London Eye viewing platform with a family of 11 trapped inside it, and trees were lost at the world-renowned Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in western London.

The Environment Agency put 271 flood warnings in place. On the Isle of Wight, off the southern coast of England, winds of 151 kilometers per hour were recorded.

The disruption occurred as weather forecasting bureau the Met Office published provisional data showing that 2023 was the UK's second-warmest year on record, fractionally below 2022, with Wales and Northern Ireland both recording their hottest years. Climate change had made higher temperatures "significantly more likely", the Met Office was quoted as saying by the BBC.

Rising water levels on the River Maas in the Netherlands caused such concern that houseboat owners were evacuated as a precautionary measure, and personnel and equipment came from as far away as Slovakia to help authorities in Germany and northern France deal with flood and storm damage in regions such as Pas-de-Calais, which had already experienced severe flooding in November.

"As the new year starts, EU solidarity does not waver," the European Union's Commissioner for Crisis Management Janez Lenarcic said.

"Once again, the EU Civil Protection Mechanism's swift and decisive assistance to the flood-stricken regions of Germany and France stands as a testament to the strength of unity. I thank Austria, Czechia, France, Hungary, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Slovakia and Sweden for quickly showing their support."