Cyclone Batters Baltic States, Killing Two and Cutting Power to Hundreds of Thousands

WARSAW, Poland — A powerful cyclone swept across the Baltic region Saturday into Sunday, killing two people and leaving nearly half a million households without electricity in Latvia and Lithuania.

“This appears to be the most severe storm to hit Latvia since 2005 in terms of overall impact,” Andris Viksna of the Latvian Environment, Geology and Meteorology Center told The Associated Press.

In central Latvia, one person died in Jelgava when part of a building collapsed Saturday, while several others sustained injuries nationwide. Wind gusts in the capital, Riga, exceeded 67 mph, and numerous weather stations recorded half their average monthly rainfall in a single day. More than 250,000 Latvian residents lost power, and mobile services faced significant disruption.

Fallen trees and debris halted rail and public transport services. Riga Airport warned Sunday morning that flights faced delays or rerouting due to the severe overnight conditions.

Neighboring Lithuania reported one fatality caused by a falling tree, with additional injuries and over 200,000 residents without electricity as of Sunday morning. Strong winds also battered Estonia—particularly its western and northern regions and islands—disrupting ferry services and delaying trains arriving from Latvia and Lithuania. In northeastern Poland, the storm knocked out power to over 100,000 customers.

Viksna noted that the specific contribution of climate change to this event cannot yet be fully assessed, though he stated it is “plausible that human-caused climate change may have intensified the rainfall associated with the cyclone.” Conditions were expected to improve throughout Sunday and into Monday.

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