Three dead as Dennis belts Britain, northern Europe

LONDON — Britain issued severe flood warnings Monday, advising of life-threatening danger after Storm Dennis dumped weeks’ worth of rain in some places. A woman was found dead after being swept away by the floodwater, the storm’s third confirmed victim.

To the east, Dennis’ galeforce winds also left nine people injured in Germany as their vehicles crashed into broken trees littering roads and train tracks. Flooding and power outages were reported elsewhere in northern Europe.

By Monday evening, Britain’s Environment Agency issued seven severe flood warnings in the central English counties of Herefordshire, Staffordshire and Worcestershire.

Another 200 lower-level flood warnings were also in place, meaning that flooding was expected.

Some 480 flood warnings and alerts were issued across England on Monday, the highest on record, the agency said.

The storm’s confirmed death toll rose to three as West Mercia police said a body had been found in the search for a 55-year-old woman who had been missing near Tenbury in Worcestershire since Sunday.

A man pulled from the water in the same incident was airlifted to a hospital, where he remains in stable condition, police said.

The weather system brought winds of more than 90 mph and up to 6 inches of rain to Britain over the weekend. And the tumult is not over.

“We expect disruptive weather into the middle of this week, bringing a significant flood risk for the West

Midlands, and there are flood warnings in place across much of England,” said Toby Willison, executive director of operations at Britain’s Environment Agency.

Forecasters said river levels in parts of northern England had yet to peak. In the northern England city of York, authorities were piling up more than 4,000 sandbags as the River Ouse continued to rise. It’s expected to peak today.

Other residents of Wales and western England were cleaning up Monday after the storm flooded roads, railways, homes and businesses and disrupted travel across Britain.

Britain’s environment secretary said climate change was making extreme weather events more common, but denied that Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative government was unprepared for such storms.

“We’ll never be able to protect every single household, just because of the nature of climate change and the fact that these weather events are becoming more extreme, but we’ve done everything that we can do with a significant sum of money,” Environment Secretary George Eustice said.

In Germany, at least nine people were injured in weather-related car accidents as high winds brought trees down onto roads and train tracks.

A commuter train with 67 passengers also crashed into a fallen tree in the western German city of Dortmund, but nobody was injured. And in the German city of Hamburg, the city’s famous fish market was flooded for the second time this month.

Farther north, strong winds and heavy rain caused flooding, road closings and electricity outages across the Nordic and Baltic regions and halted several ferries between Denmark and Norway.