Hi Wouter, trains are not running this afternoon, flights have been cancelled. Eunice is disrupting the country. What makes this storm so special?
‘Eunice will probably be a really strong storm, but it’s not very special. We have seen the wind speeds that we now expect in the northern and western part of the country, between 120 and 140 kilometers per hour. In 1990 there was a storm that even in the far interior led to wind speeds of 140 kilometers per hour, we will not experience that now.
The fact that such far-reaching measures have now been announced in advance is mainly due to the experience we have had with other storms in recent years. It happened a few times, for example in 2018, that train and air traffic came to a standstill due to the effects of strong gusts of wind. Travelers then suddenly get stuck with all the chaos that entails. They now want to prevent that.’
Code red has been declared for the northwest due to potentially dangerous situations. What can these wind speeds do?
‘When a gust of wind blows about 130 kilometers across the country, trees can be pulled down. This can pose a danger on roads or along railway lines. That is also the main reason that the NS stops with the trains: if even one tree falls on the track, an entire route is flat.
‘The strong wind can also tear tiles from roofs. Another danger is the many solar panels that have been placed on houses in recent years. Not all of them have weathered a real storm yet. Sometimes they may not fit properly. Eunice becomes a test. With such wind speeds, some may blow off.
‘Moreover, especially in urban areas, especially in the Randstad in this case, buildings can accelerate the wind. This creates a tunnel effect in some streets. Then the wind can rage through it at 150 kilometers per hour. This is life-threatening for pedestrians and cyclists. Such a wind literally blows them over.’
This is the third storm in a short time. How is it possible that the Netherlands has to deal with heavy winds so quickly?
‘In recent weeks, a very strong so-called jet stream has been above the Netherlands. That is an area at about 10 kilometers altitude. In recent days, the wind in that current reached a speed of more than 300 kilometers per hour. That’s very high.
‘The enormous wind speed creates low-pressure areas in which a storm can form. That does not always happen, but now the circumstances are such that strong wind speeds occur several times in a short time.
‘That happens in large parts of Europe. In Scotland, there were even wind gusts of 200 kilometers on the coast last week. That is actually the same wind that we have to deal with, but we are lucky with England as a buffer. Otherwise the storm would have been much more violent.’
In recent years we have seen extreme weather events associated with climate change. Will the Netherlands have to deal with a severe ‘storm season’ more often?
‘That the circumstances are like this now is really a coincidence. It is not the case that the number of storms has increased in recent years. Severe storms are of all times. It also happened that they followed each other in quick succession. In the 1970s, the Netherlands faced two of the heaviest storms of the twentieth century in three days.
‘Sometimes there are many years between them and sometimes it is only a few days. It could even be that we will see strong winds again in the coming weeks, it just depends on how the weather conditions develop. And an extremely severe storm like the one of 1990 will come along one day. Storms are really unpredictable, that’s what makes them so interesting.’