Small, but intense local thunderstorms with hail and strong winds caused nuisance and damage in various places in the Netherlands on Tuesday evening.
Around Leerdam, cars, houses and gardens were damaged by rain and hail, RTV Utrecht reports. A number of trees toppled over across roads and had to be removed by the fire brigade. In Oudewater a scouting club lost their tents thanks to the strong winds. No one was injured.
Over 140 thousand homes in the Netherlands will flood during heavy rain showers. At least 76 thousand other buildings, such as schools and shops, are also at risk of major damage due to flooding, according to research by RTL Nieuws and consultancy and engineering firm Arcadis.
Multiple fires were caused by lightning strikes while thunderstorms raged across the Netherlands on Wednesday. No one was hurt in the fires. An 18-year-old student was struck by lightning at a military base in Ossendrecht. He was admitted to a burns center in Antwerp with burns and severe damage to his lungs, his school reported.
High winds were expected all day throughout the Netherlands, prompting the fourth straight day of inclement weather warnings from the national meteorological agency KNMI. Operations at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam showed only a handful of cancellations but dozens of delays.
KNMI issued a code yellow weather alert for Noord-Holland and the Wadden Sea islands, Friesland, Zuid-Holland, Zeeland, and Limburg. Gusts of wind out of the southwest were expected to be between 75 km/h and 90 km/h, the agency said.
"One of the largest" cocaine labs ever found in the Netherlands, was found in a barn in the Zeeland town of Oud-Vossenmeer on Thursday, the police said. The drug lab was discovered thanks to a tree that was blown over by a thunderstorm on Wednesday night.
A cleanup crew was working on cutting up and removing a tree that fell next to Molenweg in Oud-Vossenmeer on Thursday when they started smelling a strange odor. They noticed men walking in and around the barn. They found this suspicious and called the police to investigate.
A second night of thunderstorms resulted in reports of damages and flooding throughout the Netherlands. Five people were injured in Amsterdam during the storm. One of them was hit by a falling tree. None of the injuries are very serious, NOS reports.
A category F1 tornado hit the Gelderland town of Rheden on Tuesday, meteorologist of the weather institute in Wageningen concluded after going to investigate the a path of destruction of what was initially called a whirlwind, which was between four and five kilometers in length. More and more storm damage reports are coming in from across the country. Insurer Interpolis alone already received 230 damage reports, six times more than usual after a storm, a spokesperson said to AD.
The thunderstorms that crossed the Netherlands on Tuesday night caused damage throughout the country. Dozens of reports were received, most regarding fallen trees or roofs being blown from houses. One person was hospitalized after a tree fell on a moving car, NOS reports.
With an average wind speed of 9 on the Beaufort scale in Vlissingen, the first official spring storm of the year became a fact on Sunday. Local safety offices in Noord-Brabant and Zeeland received dozens of damage reports. In Limburg train traffic was halted because of fallen trees on the tracks. And Eindhoven Airport had to temporarily keep all flights on the ground.
Scaffolding used for construction work on the shopping center on Tooropstraat in Nijmegen collapsed on Monday morning. The scaffolding, which was built over the whole facade of the shopping center, is blocking the entire street. The exact cause of the collapse is not yet clear, but the strong wind may play a role, De Gelderlander reports.
The thunderstorms that raged across the Netherlands this week caused between 5 million and 10 million euros worth of damage to homes in the Netherlands, according to insurers' union VNV. Damages to cars, government buildings and the agriculture sector are not yet included in that amount, RTL Nieuws reports.
The damages are difficult to estimate, because the storms involved very local showers. But the damages don't seem to be very severe, according to VNV. This is mainly because there was little hail. Hailstones cause a lot of damage to cars, agricultural crops and greenhouses.
Achmea expect to pay out more than 100 million euros in claims for damages caused by the two storms that raged over the Netherlands in January, the insurer announced on Wednesday. This includes damages suffered by the agricultural sector, NU.nl reports.
A massive storm that hit the Netherlands on Thursday caused around 90 million euros worth of damage to cars and homes, according to a prognosis the Dutch association of insurers VvV released on Friday morning. Thursday's storm is the third largest to hit the Netherlands this century, the association said. The Netherlands annually deals with four to five large storms across the country, with an average annual damage of 50 million euros.
A difficult Thursday rush hour was expected to cap an annoying work day for many in the Netherlands. Trouble on the railroad, confusion at the airport, and traffic jams were likely to continue well into the evening.
Hundreds of storm damage incidents were reported around the Netherlands on Thursday morning, with insurer Interopolis reporting three times more damage notifications than they expected, a spokesperson told Omroep Brabant. With several hours of sustained heavy winds battering the Netherlands, and gusts peaking at TK km/h, the damage caused by Thursday’s storm should easily top a 10 million euro estimate, the Dutch insurers association VvV told newswire ANP.
With reporting by Zack Newmark.
The Wednesday storm that blew across the Netherlands with wind speeds peaking at 141 kilometers per hour caused roughly 10 million euros in damage to homes and vehicles, the insurance association Verbond van Verzekeraars (VvV) announced on Thursday. A full year of storms cause physical damage of roughly 50 million euros, a spokesperson told broadcaster NOS.
With the first storm of the year hitting the Netherlands today, the first storm damage reports of the year are also coming in. According to Weerplaza, a gust of 141 kilometers per hour was measured in Vlissingen early on Wednesday morning. The storm is expected to peak between 11:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m.
An autumn storm that hit the Netherlands on Thursday mostly caused damage in the east and north of the country. The biggest disruption caused by the storm, was when tents set up for horse event CSI Salland were blown down in Mariënheem, sending a number of expensive horses running, RTL Nieuws reports.
Hurricane Maria pulled past Sint Maarten during the early hours of Wednesday morning, at first sight with out causing much damage. Sint Eustatius and Saba got more wind and rain this time around, compared to hurricane Irma two weeks ago, but there too the damages seem to be limited, AD reports. The hurricane is still increasing in strength and is now heading towards the American Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.
Increasingly severe storms due to climate change means increasing storm damage, and the damage counter is rising faster than expected, according to an analysis by the Dutch association of insurers. In the worst case scenario, storm damage will increase by over 260 million euros annually, compared to the current situation, the association calculates, RTL Nieuws reports.
The damage caused by the first autumn storm to hit the Netherlands this season, amounts to 5 million euros at most, according to the first rough estimation by the Dutch association of insurers VNV. The damage is "not exceptionally large", a VNV spokesperson said to the Leeuwarder Courant.
The VNV usually does not announce damage amounts below 10 million euros. "And this storm was below that", spokesman Rudi Buis said to the newspaper. "Keep it at a few million, 5 million at most."
Dutch King Willem-Alexander is overwhelmed by the devastation Hurricane Irma left on Sint Maarten, one of the Caribbean islands that form part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. "I've never seen anything like this, everywhere you look you see destruction and upheaval", the King said from the island on Tuesday, NU.nl reports.
Hurricane Irma took at least six lives on Saint-Martin, the French part of the island that also includes Sint Maarten, broadcaster Franceinfo reported on behalf of the French government. Thus far no information is available about victims in the Dutch part of the island, the Telegraaf reports.
