The citizens of Greater Manchester, in the northwest of England, have been surprised by a peculiar tornado that has ripped off roofs and knocked down walls in at least a hundred houses in this county. The phenomenon, absolutely unusual in these latitudes, caused numerous Britons to take to the streets in terror and others to lock themselves in the safest rooms of their homes in the early hours of this Thursday morning (Spanish time) while the rubble, branches and entire trees fell onto the street, crushing several parked vehicles. The United Kingdom says goodbye to the year hit by 'Gerrit', a deep storm that especially affects Scottish lands and promises below-zero chimes in many parts of the country.
The Police reported this Thursday that, as a result of the peculiar hurricane, there were no injuries, but hundreds of people were displaced to safer places, including City Hall. Buildings in Stalybridge, Tameside, were the most devastated overnight by wind gusts exceeding 120 kilometers per hour. In the light of day, it is possible to see how entire roofs have been torn off, exposing the interior of the homes. The authorities have prohibited residents from returning to their homes until they are inspected by structural damage technicians. He has also urged not to travel to Stalybridge, the epicenter of what the British Meteorological Service considers a “localized tornado.”
According to these sources, the phenomenon occurred at the stroke of midnight when the region was swept by a series of “supercell storms.” Unlike usual storms, where the air rises, cools and descends, generally in the form of rain, this other stormy episode, also known as supercells, consists of an immense current of ascending air in rotation, called a mesocyclone, joined to another descending and very cold parallel current.
This system generally causes strong hail storms and can also cause tornadoes like the one that occurred in Manchester due to wind spirals, although it is more frequent and more violent in the United States or southern Latin America. Without going any further, in Spain they are common, especially in Teruel. Aragón suffered one of these meteorological events only six months ago. The normal thing in our country is that it is reflected in spectacular hailstorms.
“It was just a small, short-lived tornado and that's why the damage was limited to a fairly small area,” explained the BBC's 'weatherman', Mike Taylor, after reporting on the abundance of thunderstorms over the Great Britain. Manchester that are causing problems in the energy supply network. “What is quite surprising to many is that we actually see more tornadoes per square mile here in the UK than anywhere else in the world,” he added. “But as we saw in Stalybridge, they tend to be very small, they don't last long and therefore we don't notice them as much as in other parts of the world.”
A group of municipal workers places barriers against the flooding of the river in a town in Scotland.
Reuters
The Millbrook and Carrbrook areas, within the Stalybridge area, have been the worst affected. A neighbor of the latter place, John Spencer, explained to the public broadcaster how the wind threatened to break the windows of his house “and knocked down a tree in my back garden which fell on the greenhouse. “I was really scared.” Other residents recalled that the phenomenon lasted only a short time, about thirty seconds, but during that time the houses shook.
'Gerrit' has become the favorite topic of conversation in all British lifts, one of the common places for citizens' weather discussions. It especially punishes the coasts of Scotland, which this Thursday woke up with 16,000 homes without electricity, railway cuts, threats of flooding and roads involved in absolute traffic chaos due to water and snow.
Hundreds of drivers have been trapped for hours in a kilometer-long traffic jam on a motorway, while London trains covering the route to Scotland have only run to Preston since Wednesday. An Intercity unit has also collided with a fallen tree on the route between Dundee and Glasgow. «Horror damage caused by a tree impact on a locomotive. Fortunately the driver was unharmed,” wrote Scottish Parliament Member Paul Sweeney, who was traveling on the train and published a photo of the destroyed cabin. However, railway operators hoped to gradually restore service.
![Image taken by MP Paul Sweeney of the cabin of the train that hit a tree.](https://s2.ppllstatics.com/rc/www/multimedia/2023/12/28/Clipboard-0130.jpg)
Image taken by MP Paul Sweeney of the cabin of the train that hit a tree.
The English Channel ferries face strong winds and at Heathrow airport it was necessary to cancel a total of 18 flights this Wednesday, several of them to Madrid and Barcelona. Air connections with Paris and Berlin have also suffered restrictions.
The forecasts are unstable, but they do not accompany the Christmas holidays. Emergency services in England have been facing 24 flood warnings since this morning. Predictions indicate that thermometers may drop to six degrees below zero in the coming days. And then there's the damn wind, which threatens the survival of the fireworks shows on New Year's Eve.
The alert continues in Germany
And while the United Kingdom faces meteorological uncertainty for the end of the year, floods in the center and north of the country continue to grip Germany. In some regions, firefighters and Civil Protection forces have begun to relax after the water reaches maximum levels, but in others the situation has not yet reached critical levels. This is the case in the south of the State of Lower Saxony, where about 300 people had to be evacuated from their houses and dwellings in the town of Winsen when the Aller river overflowed. More than half a meter of water covers streets and roads in the area, where the electricity supply has been preventively cut off to prevent accidents. The rivers Weser, Leine and Oker have also overflowed in the state, flooding farms and fields.
In Drakenburg, in the Nienburg district in southern Lower Saxony, the Weser has surpassed the record level of the 1981 floods by exceeding 8.34 meters above the normal channel. This has led to the catastrophe pre-alarm being activated in several districts so that additional forces can be called in to fight the waters by protecting dikes and erecting sandbag barriers. The town of Sarstedt, where the Innerste and Leine rivers meet, has been especially affected. Also in the Verden district, several small towns are “seriously threatened”, according to a fire brigade spokesperson.
The authorities of the city of Braunschweig, also affected by flooding in some of its neighborhoods, indicated that “the high water levels will remain stable in the coming days” and are not expected to decrease soon, after the Okertalsperre dam would reach its maximum levels and those responsible would be forced to massively drain water into the Oker channel to avoid a rupture. Meanwhile, in the Saxon city of Dresden, the level of the Elbe is expected to exceed six meters above normal this Thursday, after flooding streets and walks near its channel. The city had already activated level 3 of 4 flood alarm this Tuesday and local firefighters, helped by volunteers, had proceeded to protect critical places in the city with sandbag barriers.
![Water floods the streets of Hamburg.](https://s1.ppllstatics.com/rc/www/multimedia/2023/12/28/Clipboard-0131.jpg)
Water floods the streets of Hamburg.
AFP
The situation in the historic city of Magdeburg, capital of the federal state of Saxony-Anhalt, is also critical in the face of the flooding of the Elbe, largely due to the early thaw in the Giant Mountains bordering the Czech Republic. In order to reduce the water pressure and cut the river's flow by a third, the authorities ordered the opening of the Pretziener Wehr dam. With a length of 135 meters, this dam was last opened in 2013, and its opening will allow a good part of the Elbe's flow to be diverted through a 21-kilometer peripheral canal around Magdeburg, Schönebeck and other towns, to return to the river once that distance has been overcome.
The Hanseatic city of Bremen is also suffering from flooding, especially in the Borgfeld neighborhood. In Timmersloh, firefighters managed to reinforce the dikes and prevent new evacuations from being necessary. In Hanover, firefighters rescued a 75-year-old man from the waters of the Leine, after falling from his bicycle and falling down an embankment. The man was able to cling to the branch of a waterlogged tree and call for help with his mobile phone. Special Civil Protection forces managed to locate him with the help of two drones and rescue him with a boat. Although there will be no precipitation this Thursday, the German Meteorological Services (DWD) have warned that heavy rain and storms are expected in the coming days that could lead to new critical situations in some regions. “Especially in the west and northwest, weather models show heavy rainfall that could cause river levels to rise rapidly,” a spokesperson said.
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