At least three people died in a windstorm that hit central Europe on Sunday, causing widespread power outages and traffic disruptions, rescuers said.

In the Czech Republic, falling trees killed a woman near the central city of Trebic and an elderly man in Jicin northeast of Prague.

A driver died in his car in Poland after crashing into a branch that had fallen on the road near the northwestern city of Szczecin, firefighters said.
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The strong winds halted traffic on dozens of railways and several roads across the Czech Republic. Some rivers in the north of the country reached the highest flood-alert levels.

“At present, hundreds of thousands of households are left without power,” Sona Holingerova Hendrychova, spokeswoman for the state-run power producer CEZ, said in a statement.

About 200,000 people were also grappling with power outages in western Poland.

In Austria, the organisers cancelled the men’s World Cup season-opening giant slalom at Solden scheduled for Sunday.

In Germany, the storms caused flooding in Hamburg, where waters rose up around the city’s fishmarket.