Rain will continue to fall in Cyprus until Thursday, met office senior officer Panayiotis Georgiou said on Sunday.
He told the Cyprus News Agency that the eye of Storm Byron is currently located west of the island and moving slowly eastwards, and that for this reason, rain and storms will continue until Thursday, with the storm expected to have passed by Friday.
He also made reference to the yellow weather warning which is in effect for Sunday, saying the storms “seem to be subsiding late in the afternoon, at least inland and in the mountains”, while isolated rain hits coastal areas “periodically” during evening hours.
Those rains and storms, he said, are expected to intensify on Monday.
Asked if stronger winds are expected, he said that while the wind is expected to be “more intense on the coast”, winds inland will remain unchanged compared to regular days, and that while “strong and variable” winds are expected to hit during storms, no “extreme” wind is forecast.
His comments come after landslides occurred in the mountains above Limassol, with the police saying on Sunday morning that “landslides of rocks and lumps of soil” have occurred on roads in the region, with traffic “affected in some cases”.
Meanwhile, the Limassol municipality announced on Sunday morning that it had cancelled all Christmas-related events for a second successive day.
Sunday’s yellow weather warning is to be in place between 5am and 6pm, with the met office saying that “isolated strong thunderstorms are expected to affect the island”, initially in the west and progressing eastwards.
“Hail is expected to fall during thunderstorms while winds will vary and increase,” with rain expected to fall at intensities ranging between 35 and 55 millimetres per hour at the height of the storms.
The storms began in earnest on Friday night, with heavy rainfall and strong winds hitting swathes of the island both on Friday and Saturday.
Tornadoes were reported in both the Paphos and Kyrenia districts on Friday night, with uprooted trees falling on properties near the Vrasida folk art museum in the Paphos district village of Tala and the village’s mukhtar Ioannis Konnikos saying electricity cables nearby had caught fire after being struck by a fallen tree.
He said that the electricity authority was immediately notified and that power was restored to the affected areas after a two-hour power cut.
In Kyrenia, meanwhile, workers at the Teknecik power station reported “significant damage” to the power station’s entrance and an administrative building as a result of a tornado.
Turkish Cypriot electricity workers’ trade union El-Sen said its workers were “working tirelessly and diligently to repair the damage and restore normal operations as quickly as possible”.
