A 59-year-old woman died in Belgium’s East Flanders province on Tuesday after being hit by a blown-away fence during a period of heavy rainfall in the country, local governor Carina Van Cauter said in a statement on Wednesday.
There are no large-scale evacuations planned in the region for the time being, Van Cauter added.
Meanwhile, Finland and Sweden have recorded the coldest temperatures of the winter so far with thermometers falling to minus 40C (minus 40F), or even lower, as the countries remained in the grip of the Nordic cold snap.
The temperature dropped to minus 41.6C (minus 42.8F) in Nikkaluokta, a small village in northern Sweden, on Tuesday, Swedish public broadcaster SVT said.
Several other areas of the same region have seen minus 30C (minus 22F), according to the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute.
In neighbouring Finland, the coldest reading of its winter so far was recorded in the northwestern town of Ylivieska where the temperature fell to minus 37.8C (minus 36F) early on Tuesday. It dropped to lower than minus 30C (minus 22F) in parts of the Arctic Lapland region.
Helsinki won’t escape either, with temperatures of between minus 15C (5F) and minus 20C (minus 4F) expected in the Finnish capital all this week.
But the Finnish Meteorological Institute has warned it could be much colder in parts of the country, with temperatures getting even lower than minus 40C (minus 40F).
