Western Europe's Weather Is Off The Rails, Too. Especially Paris Flooding

A statue engulfed in Seine River flood water this
week in Paris. 

Many people, including myself,  have always wanted to go the Louve in Paris. If you're in Paris now, you're out of luck. The Louve - at least part of it -  is closed. 

Some of the worst flooding along the Seine River in decades has flooded neighborhoods and streets, and forced evacuations of some neighborhoods. As a precaution, the Louve moved some priceless artworks in lower parts of the complex to upper floors.  

Parts of the Paris Metro are shut down, expressways near the river are also closed, and tourists can't take riverfront cruises.

The flood along the Seine in Paris is peaking today, and the water should slowly recede after that.  The river is peaking at 5.95 meters, just shy of the 6.1 meters in 2016. This would make the Seine flood among the worst in modern records. On the bright side, it's not THE worst.

Initially there were fears the Seine could reach the record level of 8.62 meters, which would have shut down basically the entire city of Paris and would have forced the evacuation of at least a few hundred thousand people, if not more.

This has been Paris' third wettest December-January period on record.

The Seine flood is a symptom of how stormy it's been in western Europe this month. There were two whopping wind storms that caused extensive damage from England to Germany.

Guards on a rooftop for the Davos World Economic Forum
in Switzerland had a tough time of it with deep snow.

You might have also seen the footage out of Davos, Switzerland, where all those worldwide mucky mucks just had their big soiree. It snowed like hell there, making transportation difficult, and - horrors! making the helicopter landing pad temporarily unusable.

Some people in Switzerland were evacuated due to an avalanche danger. A few places in the Alps got ten feet of snow in a week.

In the lower elevations of western Europe, they've been enjoying a very warm winter, if you discount the storms, flooding and wind damage, I guess.  Denmark looks like it's going to have its warmest January on record. On Wednesday, one town in Denmark reached 55 degrees, a national record for warmth in Denmark for January. Other nearby nations will come close to having a record warm January.

As we Americans in the eastern United States shivered in one of the coldest New Year's Eves on record, it was almost t-shirt and shorts weather in Europe. Most of Germany had its warmest New Year's Eve on record, with temperatures as high as 56 degrees.

The Northern Hemisphere's wild winter weather ride has been caused by a unusually wave jet stream pattern, with a big bulges to the north in western North America and western Europe. This  has caused mostly dry, warm conditions in California and the very warm, stormy weather in western Europe.

Big corresponding dips in the jet stream froze out eastern North America earlier this winter, and is persistently freezing eastern Asia. At least the Winter Olympics in South Korea are safe, as it's been unusually cold and snowy there. Seoul, South Korea got down to 0 degrees last week, at least 20 degrees colder than normal.

In Moscow, caught in a persistent storm track, they had what can easily be described as the ultimate gloomy December. That far north, a clear December day in Moscow can still yield seven hours of sunshine. For the entire month of December, the sun was out a total whopping amount of six minutes.

Not hours. Minutes. No wonder Russians have a reputation as being grumpy.

The weather pattern temporarily relaxed in North America in the past couple of weeks, as I've already noted in yesterday's post, but it still looks like it's going to get cold and active again for a good chunk of February.