By João Azevedo & Jérémie Fisayo-Bambi
Published on
Portugal closed all schools and shut down non-essential public services on Wednesday as Storm Charles headed towards the country’s mainland.
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
The streets were largely deserted before the main Atlantic storm arrived, after the government asked people to stay at home. Heavy rain and rough seas were expected on the Portuguese coast, with wind gusts of up to 140 km/h.
It was the first time in living memory that Portugal’s approximately 8,000 schools canceled classes nationwide due to a predicted storm.
Bad weather left part of the country at a standstill. One of the most affected sectors is transport, with long-distance coach services halted, reductions and restrictions on rail and river connections, flights canceled and ships subject to restrictions in ports. On Tuesday, thousands of people suffered a power outage.
In the capital, Lisbon, buses crossed the city without passengers and some streets were flooded due to blocked pipes. A national supermarket chain has closed its stores.
One of the main national retail chains, Pingo Doce, closed all its supermarkets and even an international technology conference attended by around 70,000 people in Lisbon canceled the day’s events. The Web Summit, which is held in Lisbon, was scheduled for the second day of its event.
The government has ordered remote working in the civil service, while telecommunications operators and insurance companies have strengthened their response capacity. Assisted by the armed forces, the emergency services are on high alert to avoid a repeat of the tragedy caused by storm Kristin at the start of the year.
Storm Charles has lost strength, forecasters say
At the same time, the latest forecasts suggest that the storm’s impact will be lighter than expected, as it has lost the “conditions necessary for its intensification.”
Jorge Ponte, a meteorologist at the Portuguese Institute of the Sea and Atmosphere (IPMA), said Charles had split into two centers in the past few hours, a change he said “made all the difference.”
Speaking to local TV channel SIC, he said forecasters work with scenarios and probabilities, and most of them pointed to a difficult situation on Wednesday. The storm then changed track in ways that models had not predicted, significantly changing the outlook for the coming hours.
Passing further south of Madeira than initially expected, the center of the depression moved away from the jet stream linked to Storm Bruna, thus losing the conditions that would have allowed it to intensify.
According to the latest forecasts, one of the centers of the storm will move inland, along the Alentejo coast, south of Lisbon. The other should head towards the Central region.
This change does not mean that previous warnings for strong winds were out of place, as winds will remain very strong, although some warnings have already been downgraded from red to orange.
Rainfall is also expected to remain intense, gradually extending to the central and northern regions.
Gn world
