Even after sunset, the sky over the Rhine-Main area is always brightly lit. Thousands of bolts of lightning shoot through the air at short intervals. Sometimes it takes less than five seconds for the next bright line to split the darkness.
According to data from the weather department of Hessischer Rundfunk (HR), it flashed 25,289 times over the Rhine-Main area. And that on Wednesday evening alone within an hour: between 8.40 p.m. and 9.40 p.m. The lightning information service from Siemens confirmed the number. About eight percent of them, i.e. 2000 lightning bolts, were earth lightning bolts that were dangerous for people.
Some figures for comparison: According to data from the Siemens Lightning Information Service, there were 242,421 lightning strikes throughout Germany in 2022. That’s about 664 per day and just under 28 impacts per hour. On August 26, on the most lightning-rich day of the past year, around 26,000 lightning bolts struck Germany; about more than 1000 per hour.
Lightning occurs in the clouds during thunderstorms: the violent up and down of water and ice particles leads to a polarization of the natural electricity in the air. If the voltage field between positive and negative charge becomes too strong, lightning will discharge – either between two clouds or between cloud and ground.
Moisture and hot temperatures are needed for thunderstorms, a Siemens spokesman said a few days ago. In the last few weeks, there has been an increase in regular cases and temperatures sometimes over 30 degrees, these requirements are met. This summer it will therefore be more frequent than in the dry – rather lightning-poor – last year.
In Unterensingen, Baden-Württemberg, a lightning bolt had deadly consequences. As the police announced on Thursday, a 43-year-old succumbed to her injuries after being struck by lightning in the Esslingen district in the hospital. A day after the incident on Saturday, a 35-year-old man died in a clinic. In addition to the two, four other people were affected. Your life is not currently in danger.
The thunderstorms in the Rhine-Main region had a major impact on Wednesday evening. Dozens of flights have been canceled at Frankfurt Airport. A spokesman said that large amounts of water had collected on the apron in the evening. Numerous flights could not have taken off on time or had to be diverted to other airports.
Ground handling was completely suspended for more than two hours, another spokesman said. Because of the late resumption of clearance, 34 machines could not have taken off in time in the evening, it said. Other flights had already been canceled by the airlines themselves.
On the Airport website around 70 flight cancellations were noted before the night flight ban began. 23 planned arrivals were also diverted to other airports due to the night flight ban. According to initial estimates by Frankfurt Airport, a four-digit number of passengers were affected by the problems.
The German Weather Service (DWD) had issued a warning of severe thunderstorms with heavy rain for all of Hesse and other parts of Germany from Wednesday evening. In Frankfurt, the fire brigade spoke of around 400 storm operations on Thursday morning. There were hundreds of flooded basements, and there was also water in the busy Südbahnhof.
After heavy rainfall, water runs through the Südbahnhof in Frankfurt-Sachsenhausen.
(Photo: Marvin Filipovic/dpa)
More south, in the Darmstadt-Dieburg district, the central control center registered 520 requests for help from the population between Wednesday 8:45 p.m. and Thursday 8:00 a.m. Since that meant a significant increase in work compared to a regular evening, the staff had to be increased.
There were also storms in other parts of Germany. Cellars and streets were flooded in Baden-Württemberg, North Rhine-Westphalia, Rhineland-Palatinate and Thuringia.