Freak storm causes chaos

By Jean Christou

TORRENTIAL rains lashed Cyprus yesterday, causing chaos in Nicosia where flooding on some city streets reached a depth of up to one metre.

Emergency services said they clocked more than 300 calls in the two hours between 1.30pm and 3.30pm when the freak storm hit.

Police reported numerous minor accidents, power cuts, fallen trees, stranded motorists, and flooded basements in homes and shops.

The British High Commission was hit by lightning, cutting off electricity for several hours.

Severe hail showers also fell in Troodos, Platres and Agros.

A police spokesman said the worst hit areas of Nicosia were Aglandja, Kaimakli, Strovolos, Latsia, and Lakatamia, but the city centre did not escape the deluge.

“You could have surfed down Nikis Avenue,” said one motorist whose car was almost submerged in the Acropolis area of the capital.

“I have never seen anything like it,” said another who was caught on the Nicosia-Limassol highway. “Visibility was only the length of the car in front and the hailstones were the size of small pebbles.”

He said dozens of cars had pulled off to the side of the highway to sit out the storm. “It was weird,” he said. “Some sections of the highway were completely dry.”

The motorist said that when he eventually reached Limassol the first thing he did was to check for damage to the paintwork on his car.

Met office director Cleanthis Philaniotis said the unusual stormy weather over the past week was because of accumulating humidity which causes instability at the hottest part of the day. “There is very low pressure prevailing over the East Mediterranean at the moment,” he said.

This has resulted in some “serious storms” in mountain regions over the past few days and one over Larnaca on Monday.

“It doesn’t happen every year. It might happen once every ten years,” he said.

Philaniotis said there may be further storms today but that by the end of the week the weather will have returned to normal for June.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.