Northern Europe continues to brace for gale-force winds and floods

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Authorities across northern Europe urged vigilance Friday as the region braced for heavy rain and gale-force winds from the east as a severe storm continued to sweep through.

The gale-force winds are expected to hit hardest in the eastern part of Denmark’s Jutland peninsula and the Danish islands in the Baltic Sea. But the British Isles, southern Sweden, northern Germany and parts of Norway are also on the path of the storm, named Babet by U.K.’s weather forecaster, the Met Office.

“It will probably be some kind of historic event,” Hans Peter Wandler of the Danish Meteorological Institute told the Ekstra Bladet daily. “But we’ll have to wait until it’s over to see if it’s going to be a two-year event or a 100-year event.”

On Thursday, U.K. officials issued a rare red alert — the highest level of weather warning — for parts of Scotland, predicting “exceptional rainfall” in the following two days that is expected to cause extensive flooding and “danger to life from fast-flowing or deep floodwater.” The last red alert in the U.K. was issued in 2020.

It likely could bring more than a month’s worth of rain in the worst-affected regions in Scotland, where hundreds of people were evacuated from their homes and schools closed on Thursday.

Police in southern Denmark — the Danish region expected to be the worst hit — said that a number of road sections in the low-lying areas were flooded and a few trees have also fallen.

Citing the Danish Meteorological Institute which issued a warning for “very dangerous weather” — its highest — police in southern Denmark said the water level will continue to rise. Sea levels in parts of inland Danish waters were expected to rise up to 240 centimeters (7.9 feet) above normal.

In neighboring Sweden, meteorologists warned of the risk of extensive flooding which may cause limited access on roads and railways along the southern coasts of the Scandinavian country. Water levels were expected to begin dropping again on Saturday morning, Swedish meteorologists said.

A bridge near Norway’s second largest city was protectively closed, the Bergens Tidende newspaper said. Ferries across the region were canceled and air traffic was hampered, with delays and a few cancellations.

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