storm
Thunderstorm with heavy rain in western Germany
Storm in Fröndenberg (North Rhine-Westphalia) photo
© Andreas Dunker/dpa
Streets were flooded and basements filled up. According to the first findings, there are no injuries.
Thunderstorms very slowly moved across western Germany on Monday and caused heavy rain locally. Some streets were flooded and basements were full. According to initial information from the police and fire brigade, no one was injured.
According to the fire department, the city of Menden was hit particularly hard in the Sauerland. There have been around 200 operations in this area, said a spokesman for the Märkisches Kreis fire brigade control center in the evening. According to the district administration, the North Rhine-Westphalian district of Olpe was also mainly about overcrowded streets and full basements. On a country road, an embankment had partially slipped into a river. The road was then at least one lane passable, it said. In the Hochsauerland district, a roof truss caught fire after a lightning strike, but the fire was quickly extinguished.
In Baden-Württemberg, isolated basements and underpasses filled up during local storms in the afternoon. Larger accidents or injuries were initially not reported to the police headquarters in the country. Firefighters in particular were in demand. In Murrhardt, a car no longer came out of an underpass in which rainwater had collected, said a police spokesman. After a lightning strike in the signal box of the Ammertalbahn, train traffic in the Tübingen area was temporarily almost completely stopped. However, the damage was quickly repaired.
In Saarland, too, the fire brigade and technical relief organization had to move out due to heavy rain. In St. Ingbert, streets were flooded in several areas and manhole covers were pushed out, the local police said. “There were significant traffic delays and traffic jams,” said a spokesman. Some houses have water in the basement.
For Tuesday night, the German Weather Service (DWD) expected thunderstorms in the western half, parts of the center and the south, some with heavy local rain of around 20 liters per square meter in a short time, hail and sometimes stormy gusts of around 70 kilometers per hour. In the northwest, gusts of wind of 85 kilometers per hour cannot be ruled out. There is also a local risk of severe weather from heavy rain with more than 25 liters per square meter in a short time or more than 35 liters per square meter in a few hours.