Floods sweep central Europe

[Crepuscular Ray]

Severe flooding hits southern Germany, Switzerland, Austria and the Czech republic, with the Vltava at risk of bursting its banks in Prague and entire villages submerged in Austria. 

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22746889

 

http://www.euronews.com/2013/06/02/flood-disaster-warnings-in-central-europe/

 

 

[AderynCoch]

Reminds me very much of the floods in Summer 2002. Passau was badly flooded then and is again now. The centre of Prague got evacuated too.

[Gray-Wolf]

Let's bear in mind that some Profs see low ice as influencing our jet positioning and that last summers further jolt down in ice levels ( by a similar amount to 07's losses) would then demand a change in the patterns we have seen occur since 07'?

 

We ( UK) have had it pretty dire over summer since 07' but this year appears to have broken that mould?

 

Is there a link?

 

I have suggested ( and opened threads in C&E) that some impacts must be seen from the latest ice min drop.

 

Check out the thread and see what you feel has occurred in the N.Hemisphere thus far?

[Summer Sun]

Thousands flee as central Europe flood waters rise

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22752544

[Gael_Force]

Let's bear in mind that some Profs see low ice as influencing our jet positioning and that last summers further jolt down in ice levels ( by a similar amount to 07's losses) would then demand a change in the patterns we have seen occur since 07'?

 

We ( UK) have had it pretty dire over summer since 07' but this year appears to have broken that mould?

 

Is there a link?

 

I have suggested ( and opened threads in C&E) that some impacts must be seen from the latest ice min drop.

 

Check out the thread and see what you feel has occurred in the N.Hemisphere thus far?

 

 

What I see is that the Jet (or an offshoot) has dug even deeper into Europe this year - not a new pattern - just an amplification of the one from the last few years. With so much high pressure around Scandinavia the likelihood is that these troughs will be stuck and just oscillate back and forth through central Europe.

 

This looks like being a disastrous year for W. European agriculture, even if the patterns change suddenly for the better the damage has already been done to large swathes of growing areas. When you add this to the human misery and business failures it is a poor outlook for an already struggling economy.

[nitro_deluxe]

Some massive rainfall totals in the past 48-72hour period in parts of the likes of Austria..150-200mm!!! Worth....

No doubt the local news and reports links reveal all.

Edited June 3, 2013 by triple_x1

[4wd]

Picture Album
http://www.sueddeutsche.de/bayern/ueberflutungen-nach-starkregen-deutschland-unter-wasser-1.1686776-11

A friend near Munich says the current set up is a frequent occurrence, it is known as the 'Salzburg drizzle' where rain is locked in near the mountains for a few days.
The problem is things were already waterlogged by frequent rain through May.

 

 

it is a regular combination, two highs north and south that squeeze a low, it is called the salzburg drizzle, common and nothing to worry about in the alps, but this time the squeeze is massive and for a real long time and it seems it will not go away soon. and already may had been nothing but rain.

 

[nitro_deluxe]

Rather worrying too is a prospect for warmer albeit conditions that may indeed favour quite widespread thunderstorms, only adding to the very high rainfall spot totals.Not the best outlook.

[4wd]

http://vimeo.com/67538948

 

[Coast]

Looks like parts of Europe have seen torrential rain for the last couple of days, apparently almost 2 months worth:

 

Prague zoo evacuated as deadly floods sweep central Europe

 

 

 

Tigers and other animals had to be evacuated from Prague's zoo overnight as flooding sparked by days of torrential rain threatened the historic Czech capital.

 

Two months worth of rain in just a few days has left at least eight people dead and driven thousands from their homes across parts of central Europe. The flooding caused chaos at Prague Zoo, where around 1,000 animals were moved to higher ground. Zookeepers had to tranquilise tigers and other large animals in a dramatic overnight operation. "It's a terrifying feeling to experience this all over again," Petr Velensky, the zoo's reptile specialist, said.

 

Officials in Prague say they do not anticipate the swollen Vltava river - which runs through the historic World Heritage listed city - to reach 2002 levels, when similar floods killed 27 people. The city's flood defences are expected to hold, but the Vltava river level is likely to rise again on Tuesday morning. "The story is not yet over here," environment minister Tomas Chalupa said.

 

The Czech government declared a state of emergency on Sunday, deploying 2,000 troops in its rescue drive as more than 8,000 people were evacuated from their homes, officials said. In Germany, the interior minister flew to the flood-hit regions on Monday and chancellor Angela Merkel was preparing to go on Tuesday, government spokesman Steffen Seibert said. How her government responds to the emergency could have some bearing on the outcome of a nationwide election in September.

 

Shipping was stopped on parts of the Danube and Rhine rivers in Germany, and along the whole Austrian stretch of the Danube, because of the high waters. The rivers are important arteries for moving grains, coals and other commodities. Thousands of people living in low-lying areas in Austria and the Czech Republic had to be evacuated from their homes.

 

The death toll in Austria rose after a man who had been listed as missing was found dead in the province of Vorarlberg, local police said. The 58-year-old had failed to return home from a party on Saturday night. In the Austrian city of Salzburg, 160 passengers were put up overnight in army barracks after the floods stranded their train.

 

Austrian foreign minister Michael Spindelegger told reporters the situation in some areas was "very fraught". Downstream nations also at risk, Slovakia on alert

 

The risk is that the flood danger could follow the course of the Danube river downstream to other European countries along its route. Workers put up flood barriers along the banks of the Danube, where it passes through the Slovak capital, Bratislava, and police shut several roads. "We are getting bad news from Germany and Austria. We have to do all we can to protect... the capital," Slovak prime minister Robert Fico said.

 

In Hungary, whose capital Budapest is also built on the banks of the Danube, state media quoted Gyorgy Bakondi, head of the National Disaster Authority, as saying that 400 people were working on flood defences. He said water levels in the river could reach or even exceed the height seen in the record flooding in 2002.

 

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-06-03/czech-capital-on-alert-as-floods-sweep-central-europe/4730832

 

http://youtu.be/llmuBlqxwhI

 

 

[Coast]

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://news.sky.com/story/1098554/floods-in-central-europe-kill-at-least-ten

[Snowangel-MK]

Did they evacuate two by two ?

[Coast]

Christian Fraser from the BBC in the Czech Republic analyses the current threat:

In the industrial city of Usti nad Labem there's nothing more to do but wait. The houses along the riverbank have already been evacuated. New metal flood barriers were hurriedly erected on Monday. They have sandbagged the most vulnerable areas - though it's more in hope than in any real anticipation their efforts will hold back the waters.

The Elbe has been rising since Monday lunchtime and the decision to open the flood dams on the Vltava River overnight will have implications. The authorities in Usti nad Labem expect the water to rise several metres higher through the day. This morning roads that we used to get into the city centre are now completely under water and impassable. Further downstream the village of Hrensko which sits in a valley on the Elbe river has been completely evacuated. Tens of thousands of people in the Czech Republic are now sitting it out in shelters.

On Monday the authorities were confident they had avoided a repeat of the worst flooding in 2002. Now they are not so sure. It is still raining here and the hillsides are saturated.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22752544

http://youtu.be/BxE8DTa8QEM

Edited June 4, 2013 by Coast

[Gray-Wolf]

What I see is that the Jet (or an offshoot) has dug even deeper into Europe this year - not a new pattern - just an amplification of the one from the last few years. With so much high pressure around Scandinavia the likelihood is that these troughs will be stuck and just oscillate back and forth through central Europe.

 

This looks like being a disastrous year for W. European agriculture, even if the patterns change suddenly for the better the damage has already been done to large swathes of growing areas. When you add this to the human misery and business failures it is a poor outlook for an already struggling economy.

 

I'm sorry , I mustn't have made myself clear? The extra drop in sea ice last summer will surely have introduced 'more energy' into the system and , if so, 'ramped things up' a bit?

 

If you look at a simple wave form when you increase the energy would you imagine that you alter amplitude and wavelength? As such the 'positioning of the trough that blighted our past 6 summers will have moved. If just amplitude (higher peaks) then the trough would have dug in to our SW again but as it is the 'wavelength' must also have been tweaked dragging the trough off to horizons new (yeah for us) but sadly this leaves a much bigger catchment area for the type of 'stuck' rains we experienced (some of our rains must have fallen over the N.Sea or Irish Sea and not in catchment basins.

 

Place 'our' old pattern over Europe then they get far more of the rains over land?

 

The other 'feature I am not seeing this year is the S.Greenland H.P. that helped with the 97% surface melt there last summer (and also the US drought/heatwaves and the 'block' that pushed sandy into that 'left hook' and into NYC)?

[4wd]

I don't see how a stuck pressure pattern in May can be blamed on ice last September, unless you were obsessive about trying to link the two. It's nothing to do with extra energy in the system, even if that could be shown to exist without invoking mysterious warming of deep ocean that conveniently can't be measured.

By 0.003C.

[Harve]

Yep, it seems this is worsening all the time and over a wide area too. My Facebook feed is, ahem, awash with photos from a huge swathe of Austria, some of Germany, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary and surely other places too.

[Crepuscular Ray]

The situation appears to have been worsened by the decision to release water from reservoirs upstream as various dams were under threat of collapse. This is more or less the same thing as happened in the case of the Wivenhoe Dam upstream of Brisbane in 2011 where the water authorities were widely criticised afterwards for delaying the decision to open the dams until the point at which the flood waters were more or less at their worst rather than allow a controlled release earlier.

[Coast]

Disaster warnings issued as deadly floods hit Europe

 

AUTHORITIES across parts of central Europe have issued disaster warnings and scrambled to reinforce flood defenses after days of heavy rain cause lakes and rivers to burst their banks.

 

Several people have already died or are missing in the floods that have swept across Germany, the Czech Republic and Switzerland since last week.  Czech Prime Minister Petr Necas declared a state of emergency for most of the nation yesterday, as Prague's historic centre was threatened by severe flooding – forcing evacuations from low-lying areas. "The government approved the declaration of a state of emergency which will enable a more effective rescue effort," said Necas after an emergency cabinet meeting, adding that there was another 1.3 billion crowns available to help fund what will have to be an extensive clean-up operation.

 

Sandbags are desperately placed along the dam of the river Gera near Walschleben, central Germany In neighbouring Austria, torrential rain caused widespread flooding and landslides, forcing hundreds of people to evacuate their homes. Rising rivers have forced the closures of highways and railway lines throughout western and southern Bohemia, while residents have also been evacuated from areas in Poland.

 

Incredibly, flood waters in Poland were so severe a fire truck was effortlessly swept away, acording to reports. The flooded soccer stadium of the FC Carl Zeiss Jena in central Germany The dire situation echos the deadly floods in 2002 that killed 17 people, forced tens of thousands from their homes and caused several billion dollars of damage across the Czech Republic. Water levels have not reached that point, but weather forecasters predict the heavy downfall will continue for at least another few days, raising fears that rivers have not yet peaked.

 

In Germany, where at least four people have died or are missing, Chancellor Angela Merkel has promised federal support for affected areas and said the army would be deployed if necessary.  Several cities including Chemnitz in the east, and Passau and Rosenheim in the south, issued disaster warnings. Passau, which is located at the confluence of three rivers, could see waters rise above record levels of 2002, said Mayor Juergen Dupper. Large stretches of the Rhine, Main and Neckar rivers have been closed to ship traffic, according to reports. Evacuations are also taking place in neighboring Austria and Switzerland.

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/404629/Disaster-warnings-issued-as-deadly-floods-hit-Europe

 

Edited June 5, 2013 by Coast

[Coast]

No relief with at lest 12 people killed:

 

 

Record floods continue in North and Central Europe

 

Floods continue to wreak havoc across northern and central Europe. The irony is that while the weather is clear, run-off means that river levels are continuing to rise.In Germany, the army has been drafted in to help.The last great flood was in 2002 – they are now saying that, along the Elbe, this one will be even worse. The same is happening along the Danube.

 

On the Austro-Slovak border, hundreds of firefighters work to save what they can after the river burst its banks.Budapest is also bracing itself for record flooding from the swollen Danube. The authorities expect high water levels to peak next Monday at around 8.75 metres. Flood preparations are underway at 20 locations across the city.There is particular concern, though, over a small zoo on Margaret Island – a popular tourist attraction in the city. 300,000 sandbags have been used to build a nine metre high dam. An operation is underway to evacuate the animals from their enclosures.

 

 

 

http://www.euronews.com/2013/06/06/record-floods-continue-in-north-and-central-europe/

 

[Coast]

 

Germans Join to Battle Rising Floods Threatening Elbe Towns

 

Firefighters, soldiers and volunteers in eastern and northern Germany toiled through the night to defend against floods that have submerged towns, villages and farmlands for the second time in 11 years. Crews in Dresden, home to the 18th century Frauenkirche that was rebuilt after German re-unification in 1990 and which narrowly escaped serious damage in the last deluge, have evacuated more than 1,300 people from low-lying areas as the Elbe River inched closer to the 9.4-meter (31 feet) high recorded in 2002. The water plateaued just below 9 meters this morning, a city official said.

 

The floods, triggered by unseasonal heavy rainfall, are part of the worst in central Europe since 2002, when rising waters overwhelmed towns and cities in Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic and the Danube region. About 15,000 people have been evacuated from their homes in the state of Saxony and thousands more in Saxony-Anhalt and Bavaria. Rail, road and river traffic has been disrupted by the rising waters. “Most people here have not insured their farms and are really scared that they will lose everything they own,†said Christopher Stolzenberg, a 35-year-old public relations manager from Berlin, by phone. He traveled to the village of Hohenberg-Krusemark in Saxony-Anhalt to help pack sand bags before the Elbe crests there over the weekend.

 

‘More Precarious’

 

As water levels subsided in parts of Bavaria, Austria and the Czech Republic, the full force of the deluge that has swamped central Europe since the weekend is expected to hit Dresden and other towns along the Elbe in the coming days. Volunteers connecting on social media teamed up with emergency services as homes on the banks of the Elbe succumbed to the floods, submerging the district of Gohlis in Dresden. They joined about 85,000 emergency services personnel, soldiers and medical professionals countrywide to evacuate people and build dams. More than 4,000 people in the Bavarian district of Deggendorf on the Danube were evacuated after dams burst, submerging the villages of Fischerdorf and Georgenhof, local media reported.

 

Chancellor Angela Merkel is expected to arrive in the town of Bitterfeld, about 140 kilometers (87 miles) south of Berlin on the Mulde River, to survey the damage after a dam burst, causing nearby lakes to spill over, according to a spokesman for the district of Anhalt-Bitterfeld. It is the second visit to flood-stricken areas this week by the German leader, who is running for re-election in less than four months.

 

Leave Homes

 

Officials in the city of Halle on the Saale, a tributary of the Elbe in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, advised 30,000 people to leave their homes yesterday as water levels rose to the highest in about 400 years, Drago Bock, a city spokesman, said by phone. The Saale has begun to sink after cresting at 8.1 meters and is expected to recede further in the coming days, he said. Five hundred ships are moored along German waterways, unable to continue their journey as the floods persist, according to a June 4 report by the Federal Transport Ministry. “Large parts of Germany’s waterways are open and operable,†said Jens Schwanen, the head of the Deutscher Binnenschifffahrtsverband domestic shipping association. “Our industry is used to coping with high and low water. Some cargo moves to roads, some to railroads.â€

 

Emergency Aid

 

The federal government and KfW development bank have pledged 200 million euros ($262 million) in immediate aid and loans to support private individuals, small businesses and municipalities affected by the catastrophe. Germany is also in talks with European Union partners to obtain assistance from EU structural and solidarity funds, Economy Minister Philipp Roesler said yesterday. “Beyond the immediate help, we will in solidarity -- with the states -- do whatever is necessary to help overcome the long-term effects of the floods,†Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said in a speech to Parliament in Berlin today. “Everyone can rely on that. No one can assess the scale of the damage at the moment.â€

 

Saxony started handing out emergency aid of 400 euros for every adult and 250 euros per child, whose homes have been affected by the floods, according to the finance ministry. French and Dutch soldiers joined 8,000 German troops evacuating thousands of people, giving medical aid and propping up dams. Volkswagen AG (VOW)’s Porsche halted production at its assembly plant in Leipzig, where the Cayenne sport-utility vehicle is built, because the floods are preventing freight trains from delivering components made in Bratislava.

 

Water levels continued to rise in Usti nad Labem, a Czech regional capital northwest of Prague on the German border that is situated on the Elbe. Officials expect the river to crest there today at about 11 meters, close to 2002 levels.

 

 

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-06-06/germans-join-to-battle-rising-floods-threatening-historic-cities

 

[Summer Sun]

Europe floods: Hungary Danube set for record high

 

Hungarians have been warned to prepare for their country's worst floods ever as the Danube is set to reach record levels this weekend. "We are facing the worst floods of all time," said PM Viktor Orban. Europe's second-longest river is set to hit unprecedented levels in the capital Budapest in the next few days. A state of emergency has been declared, and thousands of volunteers have been working to reinforce the banks of the swelling river. Water levels are set to reach reach 8.85m (29ft), some 25cm (10in) higher than the Danube's previous record high in 2006.

 

Emergency workers have set up camps along the river as residents packed sandbags around their homes amid an atmosphere of concerned expectation, says the BBC's Nick Thorpe in Budapest. Kristalina Georgieva, the EU Commissioner for International Co-operation, Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Response, tweeted: "Hungary well prepared for highest ever measured water levels on Danube. We are monitoring & ready to assist." Mr Orban, who spent the night at a military barracks in the flooded western city of Gyor, said recent dry weather in Austria and Germany, as well as a hot forecast for Hungary over the weekend, gave reason to hope that Europe's worst river floods for more than a decade could soon be over.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22811172

[Coast]