ENVIRONMENT – A major ecological disaster that continues. Storm Boris, which has been hitting Central and Eastern Europe since this weekend, has already left nine dead and several missing in Romania, Austria, Poland and the Czech Republic. After record rainfall on Saturday and Sunday, the rain is starting up again on Monday, September 16, raising fears of new scenes of desolation.
As you can see in our video at the top of the articledams are overflowing, hundreds of people are being evacuated by helicopter, some towns are completely under water, others are cluttered with uprooted trees and stones scattered by the floods.
The human toll is just as heavy as the material damage. The Czech police reported a new death on Monday, ” who drowned in the Krasovka River near Bruntal (northeast) »bringing the death toll across all countries to nine.
Terrifying numbers
In addition to the images of the flood, some figures on rainfall allow us to understand the scale of this meteorological event. Over 72 hours, up to 430 mm were recorded in the north of the Czech Republic and 200 mm in Austria,” points out X the agroclimatologist Serge Zaka, who is also surprised by “ the extent of the rainy episode » : « It’s like it’s raining 50 to 400 mm [sur une zone allant] from Paris to Marseille via Lyon, Bordeaux and Toulouse.
Meteorologist Guillaume Jausseau shares other impressive rainfall totals in 72 hours, including 319 mm falling in Tulln, 40 km from Vienna in Austria, a “ historic record broken over a 72-hour period”The previous one dated back to 1967, he said.
He continues to list: 464 mm fell in Serak in the Czech Republic, 382 mm in Sankt Pölten in Austria, 255 mm in Marktschellenberg in Germany, or 188 mm in Bielsko-Biala in Poland. The storm caused massive power cuts, disruptions in the transport network and mass evacuations of residents everywhere.
Climate change makes episodes more intense
Et « it’s not over”warns meteorologist François Jobard on the same social network. Citing the German weather institute DWD, he indicates that “40 to 80 litres of water per m² are still expected by Tuesday morning in the areas already affected, locally more than 100 litres of water per m².”
The meteorological phenomenon that causes these rains is a cold drop, a mass of cool air isolated in a warmer atmosphere. This phenomenon causes intense precipitation and a more or less violent drop in temperatures.
The damage is all the more significant as the depression is blocked over part of Europe, ” because a high pressure area located towards Russia prevents it from progressing and escaping towards the East”, precise in Release the climatologist Davide Faranda: We will therefore have to wait a few days before the situation calms down.
As for the link between storm Boris and climate change, it is explained by the research director at the CNRS, Christophe Cassou, on X: “ Climate change decreases the likelihood of a storm of this intensity forming. But if it does form, climate change increases its impact because the cold drop contains more potentially precipitable water.”
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