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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

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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