In the Moscow region, authorities spent the whole day yesterday assessing the scale of the destruction that occurred due to the squally winds with downpours that swept over Moscow on July 24. In the capital, 2.5 thousand trees were knocked down, three thousand square meters of building roofs were damaged, two gas pipelines were damaged, and 190 trolleybus and tram lines were broken. Five people were killed, 36 were injured of varying severity. The northern and northeastern areas of the city suffered the most. Several metro stations and tens of kilometers of roads were flooded. The movement of electric trains along the Riga, Yaroslavl and Kazan directions was stopped for three hours due to a disruption in the railway power supply system. In the Moscow region, the worst affected by the disaster were the Istrinsky, Khimki and Krasnogorsky districts, where power lines were damaged and more than five thousand trees were knocked down. According to the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations, 1,150 people and 258 units of special equipment were involved in eliminating the consequences of the natural disaster in the capital. Meteorologists predict that warm, rainy weather will continue in Moscow and its environs in the coming days. Experts do not rule out that squally winds may hit the capital again. By the way, weather forecasters themselves were among those affected by the thunderstorm. A powerful lightning strike fell directly on the yard of the Hydrometeorological Center. The cable system was damaged, and part of the equipment of the main computing and radio meteorological centers was disabled. However, this did not affect the operational activities of weather forecasters, who managed to quickly use backup equipment. The amount of damage to Roshydromet amounted to 15-20 thousand dollars.
