Over 400,000 people in Crimea were left without power on November 27 after hurricane force winds and heavy rains battered the Russian-annexed peninsula over the weekend. Wind speeds of more than 140 kilometres per hour (about 90 mph) were recorded during the storm, which triggered a state of emergency in some of the peninsula's municipalities

The storm also hit southern Russia and sent waves flooding into the beach resort of Sochi, blew the roof off a five-story building off in Anapa and damaged homes and schools in Kuban, the state news agency said

It was part of a weather front that earlier left one person dead and hundreds of places without electricity amid heavy snowfall and strong blizzards in Romania and Moldova on Sunday

The storm prompted several Crimean regions to declare a state of emergency after it became the strongest recorded in the past 16 years with wind speeds reaching 144 kph (almost 90 mph), Tatyana Lyubetskaya, a Russia-installed official at the Crimean environmental monitoring department, told Tass

The government in Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014, told people to stay at home on Monday and closed government offices including schools and hospitals as strong winds are still expected

The head of one Crimean region, Natalia Pisareva, said everyone in the Chernomorske area of western Crimea had lost water supply as well as central heating because pumping stations had lost power. There were also reports of a problem with a gas pipeline in Saky, western Crimea