Sharp air mass boundary
Nothing worked anymore: Germany was frozen in the ice storm
With this black ice it was better to remain motionless like these gorilla figures in the Cologne winter
© Rolf Vennenbernd / DPA
Extreme black ice and lots of snow: The winter weather was particularly difficult in the middle and south of Germany. Layers of ice formed on roads and cars, and planes were temporarily unable to take off in Frankfurt.
Meteorologists warned of a sometimes extreme storm situation – and that came in the form of snow and black ice. Especially the middle and the south Germany were severely affected:
- Streets and sidewalks were dangerously slippery, and some schools remained closed or at least forewent face-to-face teaching.
- No planes took off at Frankfurt Airport due to freezing rain.
- The winter weather also slowed down rail traffic in parts of Germany. Local bus services were stopped in many places, and thick layers of ice formed on parked cars in some places.
One dead in Rhineland-Palatinate
A van driver was killed in an accident on a slippery road in the Eifel region on Wednesday. The 34-year-old drove his vehicle off the road in a curve near Bauler (Rhineland-Palatinate) and crashed into a tree, the police in Bitburg said. The man died at the scene of the accident.
The police in Trier reported a traffic jam on the A64 because the neighboring country of Luxembourg no longer allowed heavy traffic in – the trucks were backed up and were redirected to parking spaces. The winter weather also caused problems for the border region in France. There were accidents and traffic disruptions in Alsace and Lorraine, and trucks were banned from driving on main traffic axes.
Students in southern Hesse were able to stay at home
In Saarland, the police had already counted more than 100 traffic accidents around midday. On the icy A8 near Karlsbad in the Karlsruhe district of Baden-Württemberg, a driver escaped with minor injuries when she lost control of her car and the car rolled over.
Due to the traffic situation, schools remained closed in some places, for example in Darmstadt. The city explained that they do not want to expose students to unnecessary health risks on the way to school and also reduce the volume of traffic in the city “in order to defuse the situation for the fire department, emergency services and hospitals.”
The weather is sometimes cold and wintry, but in some places it also rains. Snow and slippery conditions are affecting traffic in parts of the country. A live version of the map can be found in the article
© Screenshot windy.com
Air traffic was also affected. Due to freezing rain, planes were unable to take off at Germany’s largest airport Frankfurt was temporarily suspended on Wednesday afternoon. The operator Fraport justified this by saying that the machines could no longer be safely de-iced before take-off due to persistent freezing rain. In any case, hundreds of flights had already been canceled in Frankfurt.
In view of the decreasing rainfall, individual aircraft have been able to take off from Frankfurt Airport again since Wednesday afternoon.
ICE were only allowed to travel at 200 km/h
Rail traffic in parts of Germany was also severely hindered. There are delays and cancellations in regional and long-distance transport, a spokeswoman for Deutsche Bahn (DB) announced on Wednesday afternoon. Bus and rail replacement services are also severely restricted in some regions due to the formation of black ice. As a precautionary measure, the railway limited the maximum speed of its ICE trains to 200 km/h. This caused further disruption nationwide. A number of ICE connections from Frankfurt or Stuttgart to Paris were completely canceled.
According to the DWD, the reason for the severe weather situation was a sharp air mass boundary over the middle of Germany, which separates cold air in the north from very mild sea air in the south.
Nice winter weather at the weekend
With a view to extreme black ice for the next few days, the DWD gave the all-clear. “At the weekend we can look forward to cold winter weather with sunshine,” it said.