Baltic Cyclone Kills 2 and Cuts Power to 500,000 as Winds Top 67 mph
Updated
Updated · The Associated Press · Aug 23
Baltic Cyclone Kills 2 and Cuts Power to 500,000 as Winds Top 67 mph
3 articles · Updated · The Associated Press · Aug 23
Summary
Around 500,000 people in Latvia and Lithuania were without electricity after a cyclone swept through Saturday into Sunday, killing one person in Latvia and one in Lithuania.
Winds exceeded 67 mph in Riga and many Latvian stations logged about half a month's average rainfall in a single day, bringing down trees, damaging buildings and disrupting mobile networks.
More than 250,000 outages were reported in Latvia and over 200,000 in Lithuania; rail, public transport and Riga airport operations were hit, while Estonia and northeastern Poland also suffered power cuts and delays.
Latvia's meteorology center called it the country's most severe storm since 2005 by overall impact, and said conditions should ease on Sunday and by Monday even as climate change may have intensified the rainfall.