By Benjamin von Brackel and
Vera Schroeder
On Monday morning, July 12, the disaster first announced itself on the sixth floor of a building in Offenbach. In the “Warning Center” of the German Weather Service (DWD), desk islands are surrounded by dozens of screens, from which employees can read the weather data. Radar images, shown as colorful spots over a map of Germany, show where thunderstorms or rain fronts are rolling in. On that day the evidence of severe storms intensified, the danger seemed high, but it was not yet clear how much the rain should discharge on Germany and in which areas. So the German Weather Service sent out advance information at 10:20 am on “heavy and heavy rain” of up to 200 liters per square meter locally.