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Phenomenal summer rainstorm which was 'a continuous cloudburst for an hour' causing chaos in S Netherlands, Luxembourg, Belgium and parts of Germany.

Railways closed, at least one derailment in N Belgium. Large scale evacuations in progress, sadly fatalities too.

Images from Twitter

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It is the same weather system that brought flooding to London. It has brought a lot of fatalities, and many others missing at present, with more rain forecast.

Most people do struggle to make sensible comments when confronted with this kind of extreme event (and a TV crew). "I've never seen the river like this" is not far off saying "it doesn't usually behave unusually", and of course it's always "unprecedented".

The attached is from the Westminster Gazette of 14 June 1910 - the Ahr is the river running through Shuld, one of the places worst hit this time.

News reports from Germany and neighbouring nations are shocking, with about 100 lives lost and considerable destruction of property.
Many persons are unaccounted for and the death toll is liable to increase.
Substantial areas are without electricity or communications.

This sort of thing is regrettably "the new normal" in developing countries with poor infrastructure, but are shocking in modern developed countries.

The destruction of railway property is significant, but I am not aware of any major accidents, presumably services were already stopped.

I have been sent video clippings from a village near Wittlich by a friend who's wife owns a house there which we have visited regularly. The local fire brigade is gas axing the railings off the two road bridges over the Salm river so they don't trap trees when they are going to be overtopped - which has never happened before. Presumably this lowers the chances of the bridges being swept away.

The village has seen floods - and indeed I witnessed one three years ago - but no-one in their lifetime has seen anything approaching the present situation.