Heavy rain and thunderstorms
Storms in parts of Germany – fan zones affected
At least a little protection: football fans in Dortmund have taken shelter at food stalls during the pouring rain. Photo
© Christoph Reichwein/dpa
Forget about summer fairytales! Heavy thunderstorms are causing problems for many people during the European Football Championship. Several fan zones remained closed today. A suspected tornado has been reported from Saxony.
Meteorologists had spoken of a “severe thunderstorm situation”. Later in the evening (as of around 9.45 p.m.) official severe weather warnings were in effect for several regions in Thuringia, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Brandenburg.
Several fan zones for the European Football Championship were closed as a precaution – for example in Dortmund. The match between Turkey and Georgia was played there today. In Leipzig, the European Championship fan zone was ultimately closed in the evening because there was a renewed threat of bad weather, as the city announced on X. Previously, the party area on Augustaplatz had been briefly open after a temporary closure. In Leipzig, the match between Portugal and the Czech Republic is scheduled for this evening (9 p.m.).
Strong gusts of wind triggered several operations in the Meißen district (Saxony). The fire department reported a tornado in the small town of Gröditz to the control center, a police spokesman said when asked. Among other things, a tree fell onto the railway tracks there. According to initial findings, no one was injured. According to the DWD, a tornado is “quite possible”, but this must first be checked, it said.
Golf ball-sized hailstones in Thuringia
In southern Thuringia, large hailstones damaged several cars and corrugated iron roofs. No one was injured, a police spokesman said in response to an inquiry in the evening. In addition, a local county road in the Hildburghausen district was completely covered with golf ball-sized hailstones. The road has now been cleared and is passable again. There were no accidents.
In southern Brandenburg, the weather conditions led to a large number of fire department operations. There are currently around 120 operations in the area of the Lausitz regional control center, a spokesman said at around 7.30 p.m. The damage was mainly caused by strong winds. There were numerous fallen trees, it was said.
In Dortmund, heavy rain in the afternoon resulted in around 20 fire department operations. Several streets were flooded and a subway station was also filled with around ten centimetres of water, said a spokesman for the Dortmund fire department. No one was injured.
Water masses in Dortmund stadium
In the Dortmund stadium, stewards tried to minimize the effects of the rain before Turkey’s European Championship match against Georgia: They swept the water that fell like a torrent from the roofs and flowed down the stairs into open drains.
A spokesman for the Münster police also reported that the road in the direction of Dortmund at the Herne motorway junction on the A42 was flooded. However, road users could drive along there slowly.
And this is the outlook as of this evening: The DWD is expecting strong thunderstorms with heavy rain, hail and gusts of wind, particularly for southern Brandenburg and Saxony – and in some regions also severe storms with larger hail. In the broad center – “moving east-northeast from the south of North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate/Saarland” – further, sometimes strong thunderstorms are possible during the course of the night. “In particular, initially in a narrow local area, severe storms with heavy gale-force to hurricane-force gusts are unlikely and individual tornadoes cannot be ruled out,” said the DWD warning report at 9 p.m.
Overall, the potential for severe weather will decrease over the course of the night. The DWD is also expecting some heavy thunderstorms in several regions this Wednesday.