Onset of winter: dead man recovered from avalanche in Austria – Panorama

In Austria a man has been found dead under an avalanche. According to the police, the missing person in Kleinwalsertal had been sought since Friday evening.

In Tyrol in particular, numerous reports of further avalanches were received, but mostly no people were recorded. The search for two people who may have been buried was initially stopped on the Arlberg because the situation was critical for the rescue teams themselves. Heavy snowfall and wind have increased the danger.

Experts appeal to winter sports enthusiasts to exercise great caution. Inexperienced skiers should not leave the slopes at the moment. At higher altitudes, there was a widespread avalanche danger of level four on the five-part scale on Saturday. Road traffic was also severely hampered. The Austrian traffic club ÖAMTC counted 17 roadblocks due to avalanche danger in the morning. Snow chains were compulsory on 46 road sections.

Massive onset of winter in Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia

In Poland According to media reports, at least two people died in weather-related accidents on Saturday. In the Silesian town of Cisiec, south of Katowice, an elderly woman died after a tree that fell during a storm severely damaged her family home. As a fire department spokesman for the PAP news agency said, the pensioner was found by firefighters in the house. The TV channel TVN24 reported more than 140 traffic accidents related to heavy snowfall and slippery roads. A woman crashed her car into a tree in the Gdansk district and died.

In the north of Slovakia According to the TASR news agency, a crisis team imposed the so-called “exceptional situation” on Saturday over 27 communities, which allows special emergency measures and restrictions. Several popular ski resorts were closed for the weekend due to dangerous storms. Residents of the regional capital Zilina and surrounding towns were asked not to leave their homes unless absolutely necessary.

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In Czech Republic tens of thousands of households were without electricity on Saturday. As the CTK news agency reported, trees that fell on cables were usually the cause. A tree fell on a moving car near the Czech town of Jablonne nad Orlici, not far from the Polish border. Two injured people had to be freed from the vehicle by firefighters.

Germany before weather change

Heavy snowfalls have recently increased the risk of avalanches dangerously in the Bavarian Alps. In some areas, level four out of five prevails – that means great danger, said the avalanche warning center in the Bavarian State Office for the Environment on Friday. Away from the pistes, extreme caution is required. Avalanches could go off by themselves without any additional load – or be triggered by a single winter sports enthusiast. The new and snowdrift connects poorly with the old snowpack. The avalanche situation is expected to remain critical over the weekend.

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Before a strong high pressure area is supposed to bring a lot of sunshine to Germany next week, a storm at the southern tip of Greenland will bring some precipitation to Germany, meanwhile said the German Weather Service (DWD) in Offenbach. During the night of Sunday, the rain in Schleswig-Holstein is likely to turn into wet snow or sleet, and there could also be freezing rain locally. During the day the front would then spread across the middle of Germany.

Meteorologist Helge Tuschy from the DWD expects that the precipitation will then increasingly turn into snow or sleet over the course of the day from Hamburg and Lübeck to the Allgäu. Where it snows a little more heavily, one to four centimeters of fresh snow can fall within twelve hours, especially in the north and between the Harz Mountains and Franconia and on the edge of the Alps.

Monday is then a transitional day with initially still dense clouds in many places and decreasing light snowfall. From Tuesday on it will be sunnier and dry under the influence of high pressure and frosty cold at night.