A lot of the Czech Republic is dealing with flooding because of continuous rain, and the situation got really serious last night in northern Moravia and Silesia, especially in cities like Ostrava and Bohumín. Thousands of people have already had to evacuate their homes, and many more are getting ready to leave. They even started evacuating Opava last night. The power companies have declared a state of emergency in several areas – as of 7:00 a.m., about 260,000 households across the Czech Republic were without electricity because of this bad weather. The main reason for this outage is fallen trees and branches hitting power lines from strong winds, which even uprooted some power poles.
There are also issues on the railways, particularly around Karviná. The Jeseníky region is completely cut off right now; roads are submerged, and there are fallen trees blocking them. More rain is expected in the northeast until at least Monday. According to the police, getting into the Jeseníky region is nearly impossible due to impassable roads that have been undermined in many spots.
Malá Úpa in the eastern Krkonoše Mountains was cut off from the Czech hinterland by landslides.
In Dobříš, weather-weary and hungry western house martins gathered on one ledge of a house, where they began to fall to the ground from exhaustion. People from the Hrachov Rescue Station together with firefighters carefully brought them down and took them to the station, saying that without help they had minimal chance of survival.
Sadly, there were also some reckless Darwin’s Award nominees who kept rescuers busy by trying to canoe or paddleboard through the floodwaters!
There is just cold and rain in my place, lucky to have house on a hill.
There are no moths and butterflies attracted to light these cold and rainy nights. Oenothera biennis in the yard has its first seeds and last bloom. When the rain stopped for a while, a tapping sound was heard, presumably Dendrocopos major had returned for a while. The sugar water saucer is abandoned, with one dead wasp lying next to it.
So it begins.