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WEATHER

Storm continues to batter Spain, France as death toll rises to eight

The number of fatalities from a storm that battered Spain, Portugal and France rose to eight on Saturday as the region braced for more violent winds and heavy rain.

Storm continues to batter Spain, France as death toll rises to eight
Waves hit the jetty of the port of A Guarda, northwestern Spain, during storm Fabien on December 21st. Photo: AFP

A 32-year-old South Korean woman died Saturday, a day after being struck on the head by falling debris from a building in central Madrid, the Madrid region's interior minister said.

The building had passed an inspection in 2015 “but weather like this, with heavy rain and wind, causes these fateful cases”, Enrique Lopez told reporters.

A man died Saturday after his car was swept away by a swollen river near the town of Huescar in the southern province of Granada, the regional government of Andalusia said in a statement.

Emergency services in Andalusia said a 68-year-old Dutch man who went missing while windsurfing in rough weather in Huelva province Friday had drowned.

Those three deaths bring to eight to the number of fatalities from the storm that has battered Spain, Portugal and southern France overnight Thursday to Friday.

Storm Elsa flooded rivers, brought down power lines and disrupted rail and air travel across the region.

Six of the deaths have been in Spain and two in Portugal, where the extreme weather interrupted train services Saturday between the capital Lisbon and the second city Porto due to flooding on the rail tracks.

As a weakened Storm Elsa moved over Britain, the authorities in France, Portugal and Spain all warned of a fresh threat.

Storm Fabien has already brought winds of 170 kilometres per hour in Galicia in northwestern Spain, forcing the cancellation of 14 flights according to Spanish airport operator Aena.

Another 13 flights were diverted from airports in Galicia to other parts of Spain or Portugal, it added.

Some 8,000 households in Galicia were without power due to damage caused to power lines by the wind, local officials said.

Spain's national weather office has put the entire coast of Galicia and the neighbouring region of Asturias on red alert on Saturday — the highest on its four-alert scale — due to strong winds and high waves.

Eight Madrid city parks remained shut Saturday because of the strong winds.

Parks and cemeteries were also closed in Bordeaux in southwestern France onSaturday while the Arlette Gruss circus, which had set up in a big tent in the city's main square, cancelled three performances.

France's weather office placed 15 regions in the southwest of the country on orange alert Saturday, as the storm battered its Atlantic coast.

The winds were as high as 148 km per hour at Socoa, in the southwest near the border with Spain. Even on the northwest coast of Brittany, winds reached up to 120 km per hour.

The office said winds in the southwest would likely weaken through Sunday, but the region would still be buffeted by gusts of up to 90 km per hour.   

France's SNCF rail network cancelled services between Bordeaux, Toulouse and Hendaye services in the southwest because of the likelihood of winds blowing trees down on to the line.

Officials on the French Mediterranean island of Corsica have closed all the island's airports Sunday because of the approaching storm. Ferry services to the mainline have also been suspended.

And officials on the island closed the roads into Ajaccio to try to prevent anyone getting caught in floodwaters.

Nearly 10,000 homes are still without power in the southeast Rhone-Alpes region after storms overnight Thursday to Friday.

READ ALSO: Strong winds close ski slopes in France and leave tens of thousands without power

 

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WEATHER

Norway to get a taste of summer with 20C days this week

Summer is finally here! Or least it is if you live in southern Norway, where a warm front coming up from Europe will bring t-shirt temperatures of 20C by Thursday, according to forecasts.

Norway to get a taste of summer with 20C days this week

Warm air from southern Europe will combine with a high pressure zone which will bring clear skies and sunshine, with summery weather coming towards the end of the week, Norway’s national weather forecaster Yr has reported. 

“Thursday and Friday especially will be nice,” Ingrid Villa, a meteorologist at the Norwegian Meteorological Institute, told the public broadcaster NRK. “Then we will probably get temperatures of over 20 degrees Celsius in some places.” 

Patches of 20C warmth are expected both in western Norway around Bergen and in Western Norway around Oslo, with the area around Tromsø expected to have slightly cooler weather, although Villa said that “it will absolutely be something like summer there too”. 

The warm sunny weather is, however, expected to pass northern Norway by, with grey overcast skies expected for much of this week. 

But if you think summer has come to Norway to stay, you risk disappointment as much cooler temperatures are expected next week.  

“There’s nothing unusual in getting an early taste of summer in April and the start of May, and then we can quickly go back to cooler more spring-like weather,” Villa said. 

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