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WEATHER

Macron arrives in hurricane-hit Caribbean

French President Emmanuel Macron traveled Tuesday to the hurricane-hit Caribbean, to join the Dutch king who has expressed shocked over the devastation on the worst-hit territories.

Published: 12 September 2017 12:59 CEST
Macron arrives in hurricane-hit Caribbean
AFP

Macron's visit to the islands of St Martin and St Barts comes almost a week since Hurricane Irma roared over the region as a maximum Category Five storm, leaving at least 10 dead on French territory and a wide trail of destruction.

Authorities have begun evacuating locals and tourists from the hardest-hit French, British and Dutch territories in the Caribbean where many have complained about a breakdown in law and order and widespread shortages of food, water and electricity.

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Dutch King Willem-Alexander spent a night on the Dutch side of the divided island of St Martin on Monday and will travel on to other territories that bore the brunt of one of the most powerful storms on record.

“Even from the plane I saw something I have never seen before,” the Dutch royal told the NOS public newscaster. “I have seen proper war as well as natural disasters before, but I've never seen anything like this”.

“Everywhere you look there's devastation, you see the collapse,” he added.

Like the French and Dutch governments, Britain has also faced criticism for failing to anticipate the scale of the disaster caused by Irma.

Under pressure to be more responsive, foreign minister Boris Johnson is expected to travel to the region on Tuesday for a visit to the British Virgin Islands and Anguilla.

According to the latest official figures, Irma left 10 people dead and seven missing on the French islands, four dead on Dutch territories and six dead on British ones.

Macron's plane touched down in Guadeloupe Tuesday enroute to St Martin.

“He needs to come to look around, so that he realises the horror here,” one local on St Martin, Peggy Brun, told AFP.

Long queues formed Monday at the airport on the Dutch side of the island as people waited to be evacuated.
   
“Here at the gates (to the airport) they don't know anything,” Brigitte van der Posch, 46, told the Algemeen Dagblad newspaper, adding that the evacuation was “chaotic”.

WEATHER

Denmark records deepest snow level for 13 years

Blizzards in Denmark this week have resulted in the greatest depth of snow measured in the country for 13 years.

Published: 4 January 2024 14:18 CET
Denmark records deepest snow level for 13 years

A half-metre of snow, measured at Hald near East Jutland town Randers, is the deepest to have occurred in Denmark since January 2011, national meteorological agency DMI said.

The measurement was taken by the weather agency at 8am on Thursday.

Around 20-30 centimetres of snow was on the ground across most of northern and eastern Jutland by Thursday, as blizzards peaked resulting in significant disruptions to traffic and transport.

A much greater volume of snow fell in 2011, however, when over 100 centimetres fell on Baltic Sea island Bornholm during a post-Christmas blizzard, which saw as much as 135 centimetres on Bornholm at the end of December 2010.

READ ALSO: Denmark’s January storms could be fourth extreme weather event in three months

With snowfall at its heaviest for over a decade, Wednesday saw a new rainfall record. The 59 millimetres which fell at Svendborg on the island of Funen was the most for a January day in Denmark since 1886. Some 9 weather stations across Funen and Bornholm measured over 50cm of rain.

DMI said that the severe weather now looks to have peaked.

“We do not expect any more weather records to be set in the next 24 hours. But we are looking at some very cold upcoming days,” DMI meteorologist and press spokesperson Herdis Damberg told news wire Ritzau.

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