Cyclone Martin (1999)

Cyclone Martin was an extremely violent European windstorm which crossed southern Europe on 27–28 December 1999, causing severe damage across France, Spain, Switzerland and Italy one day after Cyclone Lothar had affected similar areas. Wind speeds reached around in French department of Charente-Maritime. The storm caused 30 fatalities and €6 billion in damages. Combined with Lothar, Cyclone Martin is often referred to as the ''Storm of the Century'' in western and central Europe.

Meteorological history

December 1999 saw a series of heavy winter storms cross the North Atlantic and western Europe. In early December, Great Britain and Denmark were hit by Cyclone Anatol which caused severe damage in Denmark. A second storm then crossed Europe on 12 December.

A very deep and sizeable depression, named ''Cyclone Kurt'', moved across Britain on the night of 24–25 December, analysed to have possibly reached a low of 938 mb between Scotland and Norway. This set up a large area of westerly flow into Europe, along which Cyclone Lothar was rapidly carried into mainland Europe. This highly unstable situation inevitably meant low predictability, and saw an unusually straight and strong jet stream (similar circumstances were also noted the day before the arrival of the Great Storm of 1987).

Following along the Jet Stream immediately behind Lothar, Cyclone Martin then struck France and central Europe from 26 to 28 December 1999.

Atmospheric conditions remained unstable over western Europe, and at the end of January 2000 two additional damaging storms crossed Denmark and the northern part of Germany.

Aftermath

Cyclone Martin caused extensive damage to property and trees across southern France. In terms of felled trees, 13,000,000 m³/459,090,667 ft³ of wood in Switzerland and 140,000,000 m³/4,944,053,340 ft³ were felled in France. The French and German national power grids were also left badly affected, with more than 200 electricity pylons destroyed.

Buildings and infrastructure suffered major damage throughout Martin's path, and mains power and safety systems were knocked out in many places. The storm surge from Cyclone Martin led to severe flooding at the Blayais Nuclear Power Plant, resulting in a Level 2 nuclear incident on the International Nuclear Event Scale.COMMUNIQUE N°7 – INCIDENT SUR LE SITE DU BLAYAIS
ASN, published 30 December 1999, Retrieved 22 March 2011

Highest winds

Below is a table of the highest wind speeds recorded during Cyclone Martin.

See also

* Cyclone Anatol

References

External links

* Met Office, University of Exeter & University of Reading Extreme Wind Storm Catalogue
Martin
* Eumetrain

* ttp://www.annales.org/ri/2002/425/bessemoulin009-14.pdf Les tempêtes en France
Details of damage in France (pdf)

{{European windstorms

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1999 meteorology
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December 1999 events in Europe
1999 disasters in Italy
1999 disasters in France