As predicted by global warming models, Europe continues tobear the brunt of unusually ferocious seasonal storms. Thelatest devastation took place over the past 48 hours when awinter storm generated sustained winds of over a hundredmiles an hour in many areas, leading to extensive damage andat least fifteen deaths, mostly in road accidents associatedwith the extreme weather.
In Bavaria, wind gusts in excess of 112mph were recorded,and heavy snow fell on lower Saxony. Road traffic wasseriously disrupted, and there were incidents of heavytrucks being blown over by wind gusts, including fire trucksattempting to respond to emergency calls.
In Austria, a van driver was killed when his van was blowninto the path of an oncoming car. The driver of the car wasin critical condition.
Earlier, as the massive storm swept across Scandinavia andPoland, eight people were killed, seven of them in Poland,by exposure to cold and powerful winds.
Hundreds of thousands of Europeans were left without power,and roads across the whole northern half of the continentwere closed. The Czech-Slovak border was closed in placesdue to heavy snow.
A storm of this intensity is highly unusual in Europe at anytime, and certainly has set records for this time of year.
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