It seems to me Richard Nolle was quite accurate in his predictions regarding the ravages of stormy weather for this time of the year!
Death Toll Rises as Europe
Battered by Fierce Storms
Updated 12.42 p.m. ET (1742 GMT) December 28, 1999
By Ian Phillips
PARIS — A second wave of fierce gales tore up trees and blew roofs from buildings Tuesday in France, killing 17 people along the southwestern Atlantic coast and bringing the death toll from recent storms in Western Europe to at least 108, police said.
Regis Duvignau/Reuters
People in St Louis de Montferrand near Bordeaux, France remove fallen trees from the road
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Following storms that ravaged the north of France on Sunday, a second wave of rain and devastating winds, some up to 93 mph, hit several regions of the country. The new fatalities brought the death toll in France since Sunday to 61.
A massive snow storm in Austria Tuesday triggered avalanches that killed at least 11 people, including eight German tourists who had hiked to mountain huts for a millennium party, the Austria Press Agency reported.
Two German hikers were rescued outside the western village of Galtuer, but eight others in the party were killed, the mayor of Galtuer, Anton Mattle, told APA. Elsewhere, a snowboarder was killed in a snowslide in central Steiermark state and two other hikers died in an avalanche near the southwestern town of Vent.
The severe weather also took a cultural toll. In France, slabs of roofing of the Notre Dame cathedral were blown off, and a stained-glass window at the Sainte-Chapelle was shattered. Worst hit among France's great monuments was the royal palace and park at Versailles, where the roof was damaged, windows were broken and more than 10,000 trees were knocked down.
France's National Fund for Historic Sites and Monuments estimated that it will cost between $62 million and $77 million to repair damaged cultural monuments.
Tuesday's storm brought torrential rain to the north, causing rivers to overflow their banks. There were no immediate reports of fatalities.
In Paris Tuesday, the swollen Seine River flooded riverside roads and walkways in several parts of the city. Paris officials have asked the government to declare the city a natural disaster area.
In the Vendee region, on France's western coast, more than 2,000 people were evacuated from their homes due to floods and spent the night in town halls.
Charles Platiau/Reuters
At Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, four small spires were blown off the roof and part of the northern vestry collapsed
After dawn, weather conditions in most of the country remained calm and no new storms were forecast. But at least 3.4 million homes were without electricity, officials said.
"France has been wounded and many French are faced with cruel hardship just when they were about to celebrate the end of the year and the millennium," President Jacques Chirac said Tuesday.
Transport Minister Jean-Claude Gayssot said extensive damage to the country's public transport network, caused mostly by fallen trees or flooding, would not be totally fixed before the end of the year.
"The damage is considerable," he said. "Road, rail and air routes are affected. We are really in great difficulty."
No trains were running Tuesday from Paris to Bordeaux, and only one in three was servicing the east. But trains running north from the capital were almost back to normal, and the Eurostar service to London was unaffected.
Major disruption was predicted on routes to ski resorts in the Alps. Resorts in the Pyrenees Mountains were closed due to avalanche fears.
Three nuclear reactors at a power station near Bordeaux were closed late Monday after water from the flooding Grinned River seeped into the installations.
On Monday, residents in the north had to pick their way through streets littered with broken glass and uprooted trees. In Paris, traffic lights were bent and newspaper kiosks were blown over.
Some 60,000 trees were uprooted or damaged in two forests on the outskirts of Paris, and another 2,000 were damaged along the city's streets. Authorities warned people not to visit forests because many trees still risk falling over.
Paris Mayor Jean Tiberi said urgent repair work would be done quickly, and predicted that millennium parties in the city, expected to draw millions of revelers, would not be disrupted.
The winds have also hampered the cleanup of an oil slick off France's western coast after a tanker broke in two on Dec. 12. Violent waves have broken up much of the slick, and oil has washed up on large swathes of beaches.
The storms, which began before dawn on Sunday, wreaked havoc across Europe, disrupting travel by road, rail and air and stranding tens of thousands of holiday travelers.
Seventeen people died in Germany and 13 were killed in Switzerland. A sixth person died in northern Spain Tuesday after her boat capsized in heavy winds.
Snow has also been falling since the weekend in eastern France and large parts of central and eastern Europe, disrupting traffic.
In the Slovak capital, Bratislava, the Devinska Nova Ves district was cut off from the rest of the city Tuesday because so many vehicles were stalled in heavy snow.
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