“Antonia” ensures the next stormy night – rail traffic restricted until the afternoon
“Antonia” causes heavy rain and train cancellations
The storm “Antonia” causes heavy rain and numerous train cancellations. In some areas there were floods and flooded houses again.
First “Ylenia”, then “Zeynep”, now “Antonia”: The series of severe storms again led to destruction on Monday night. Restrictions are expected in rail traffic until the afternoon. But the weather forecast also gives hope.
STowering deep “Antonia” again caused damage and disruption to rail traffic on Monday night. The fire brigades in several cities reported operations due to damaged houses and fallen trees, and the train again stopped traffic on many routes.
Passengers still have to expect restrictions on Monday. Accordingly, no long-distance trains run between Hamburg and Rostock/Stralsund, between Berlin and Rostock/Stralsund, between Norddeich Mole/Emden and Cologne and between Siegen and Dortmund.
The railway also expects regional traffic in North Baden, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland to be affected by the storm until Monday afternoon. In Thuringia, Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt, rail traffic will probably remain restricted until Monday afternoon.
DWD downgrades severe weather warning
On Monday morning, the German weather service lifted its official severe weather warnings for hurricane-force gusts or hurricane gusts for Germany. “However, there are still warnings of gusts of wind, sometimes severe gusts of wind, in large parts of Germany,” said the DWD. The cold front from storm depression Antonia crossed Germany to the south-east. Behind it, however, it will remain very windy to stormy, it said. Towards evening the wind dropped significantly.
According to the DWD, there had been extreme hurricane gusts of over 140 kilometers per hour on the Brocken and on the Feldberg in the Black Forest. Hurricane gusts of 117 km/h were reported in Lüdenscheid (North Rhine-Westphalia), and 113 km/h from Roth south of Nuremberg.
A car under a fallen tree in Cologne
Source: dpa/Federico Gambarini
The fire brigades again reported numerous operations. In Essen, “Antonia” also fanned the fire in a residential complex with 100 residents on Monday morning. The building burned down in no time. Almost a miracle: initially only three injuries were reported. They were taken to the hospital with smoke inhalation.
In Herdecke in North Rhine-Westphalia, the storm broke the flat roof of an apartment building, parts hit the roof structure of another building and spread out on a street. According to the fire department, no one was injured
In downtown Worms in Rhineland-Palatinate, according to the fire department, the storm tore roof beams and Eternit plates from a building and threw them into another house. The facade of another building and several parked cars were also damaged by debris.
The fish market in Hamburg was flooded again by a storm surge
Source: dpa/Daniel Bockwoldt
In Hamburg, “Antonia” caused another storm surge. The fish market has been flooded. According to the Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency (BSH), the water level exceeded the mean high water level by around 1.5 metres. A storm surge occurs when the flood water is at least 1.5 meters higher than normal.
Disabilities do not only exist on the rails, but also, for example, for ship passengers on the Baltic Sea between Rostock and Denmark. As the ferry company Scandlines announced, the journeys between Rostock and the Danish port of Gedse were resumed at 11:15 a.m.
“Ylenia” and “Zeynep” cost more than 1.4 billion euros
In the past few days, at least six people have died in accidents in Germany due to the hurricane lows “Ylenia” and most recently “Zeynep”. There were also fatal accidents in several other European countries, such as Poland, the Netherlands, Great Britain and Belgium.
“Ylenia” and “Zeynep” are likely to cost insurers more than 1.4 billion euros according to initial estimates. “Zeynep” caused insured losses of over 900 million euros, said the management consultancy Meyerthole Siems Kohlruss (MSK), which specializes in actuarial mathematics, in Cologne. It was the most intense storm since “Kyrill” in 2007. The company estimated the insured losses from storm “Ylenia” at 500 million euros.
The fire brigade in Berlin alone deployed around 4,000 weather-related operations between Thursday morning and Sunday afternoon. Thus, it was “the most active state of emergency weather in the history of the Berlin fire brigade”, said the capital fire brigade. In such a state of emergency, for example, the voluntary fire brigades are also called to duty.