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WEATHER

Storm Barbara leaves 76,000 homes in southern France without power

Around 76,000 households in southern France were left without power after Storm Barbara hit, bringing 200km/h winds.

Published: 20 October 2020 17:05 CEST
Updated: 21 October 2020 13:09 CEST
Storm Barbara leaves 76,000 homes in southern France without power
Illustration photo: AFP

The national weather agency Météo France on Tuesday placed twelve départements on ‘orange’ alert for violent winds. They were Ariège, Haute-Garonne, Hautes-Pyrénées, Pyrénées-Atlantiques, Tarn, Aveyron, Cantal, Haute-Loire, Puy-de-Dôme, Loire, Rhône and Isère.

The storm hit overnight on Tuesday, felling trees and causing power cuts, although there were no reported injuries.  

 

A total of 76,000 households were without electricity on Wednesday morning, especially in Pyrénées Atlantiques, Béarn, Haute Garonne, Landes and Limousin.

French electricity supplier Enedis evaluated the situation at 8:30am, saying that several hundreds of its employees were currently on the field to ‘’re-establish the electricity as soon as possible’’ in hard hit areas.

The wind reached a record strength of more than 200 km/h in Iraty in the Pyrénées Atlantiques département.

 

 

By Wednesday morning, winds of 100 km/h were still blowing in areas including the Pyrenean valleys and the Rhône département, according to the weather agency.

 

The orange alert was lifted at 10am on Wednesday.

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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.

Published: 30 April 2024 08:42 CEST
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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