Party boat sinks in London as Europe grapples with deadly flooding in some countries, extreme cold in others

Parts of Europe are experiencing an extreme start to the new year’s weather. As some countries struggle with devastating floods, others have been plunged into extreme cold, causing chaos.

Hundreds of flood warnings are in place in the UK after heavy rainfall battered swaths of the country Thursday.

A party boat sank on the River Thames in London Thursday, with the boat’s owners saying the adverse weather conditions were likely to blame. The UK’s Maritime and Coastguard Agency told CNN that everyone was accounted for.

In the east of the capital, around 70 firefighters were mobilized to deal with flooding after a canal broke its banks Thursday evening.

Elsewhere in the UK, a major incident was declared in the Nottinghamshire region due to rising river levels along the River Trent, with local authorities warning river levels could come close to record highs.

Thursday’s heavy rainfall came on the heels of Storm Henk, which swept southern parts of the country earlier this week, bringing strong winds and rain.

The storm claimed at least one life after a man died Tuesday when a tree fell onto the car he was driving in Gloucestershire, southwest England, according to local police.

The same storm also brought intense flooding to northern parts of France, leaving hundreds without power, forcing more than 370 evacuations and causing one death.

The Pas-de-Calais department of northern France was under “red alert” for flooding on Thursday, according to the country’s national weather service Météo France, but was moved to orange alert, the next level down, Friday.

Local authorities warned people in affected areas not to go into their basements, to avoid travel and stay away from waterways.

Germany, too, has been badly affected in regions that have seen persistent flooding over the past two weeks.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz visited a heavily affected flood zone in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt Thursday.

Around 200 soldiers will start their deployment Friday in Mansfeld-Südharz, a district in the state, where they will distribute 600,000 sandbags, according to a spokesperson for the country’s armed forces.

The full extent of flood damage in Germany is not yet clear but more rain is expected Friday, according to Helge Tuschy from Germany’s Weather Service.

Many of the same parts of northwestern Europe that have been flooded this month were also battered by Storm Ciarán, which brought hurricane-strength winds and claimed several lives in November.

Climate change, driven primarily from the burning of fossil fuels, is causing extreme weather events, such as heavy rainfall, to become more frequent and more intense.

As the Earth’s atmosphere warms, it is able to hold more water vapor — so when it rains, it rains much more intensely, increasing the likelihood of destructive flooding.

Last year was the hottest on record globally.