Status: 12/23/2022 5:06 p.m
The dream of a white Christmas will probably not come true this year either. According to the German weather service, it should be quite mild and rainy – and with full streets. At least Deutsche Bahn is prepared.
Lots of clouds, lots of rain and lots of traffic – this is the forecast from the German Weather Service and the ADAC for the Christmas holidays. There will probably be traffic jams or obstructions on Germany’s roads due to the heavy travel traffic around the holidays.
According to ADAC, this will mainly be on Friday, when commuter traffic meets holiday traffic. And on December 26th, the second day after Christmas, the experts expect a high volume of traffic when many Christmas vacationers come home from their family visit.
Deutsche Bahn promises 80 special trains for the festival
On the other hand, there is good news from Deutsche Bahn (DB), because it has reacted in advance to the expected volume of travel around the public holidays and has put 80 additional special trains with up to 40,000 seats on the rails – especially on the major main routes in northern and South and East-West direction.
According to DB, the start of travel at Christmas has so far been “largely smooth”. On the two busy days of December 22nd and 23rd alone, more than a million passengers were traveling on the trains, the group said. The Pro Bahn passenger association expressed skepticism that Christmas traffic would continue to run so smoothly.
Danger of thunderstorms in the south on Christmas Eve
As far as the weather on the holidays is concerned, the forecast from the German Weather Service (DWD) in Offenbach is less optimistic: lots of clouds, mild temperatures and repeated rain.
On Christmas Eve it is mostly cloudy everywhere. Between Schleswig-Holstein and Brandenburg it rains at first, in the afternoon it stays mostly dry. The rest of the country will experience intermittent showers throughout the day.
In southern Upper Bavaria, the DWD even warns of storms. The continuous rain is expected to bring up to 60 liters of precipitation per square meter in the Allgäu and 90 liters in the Allgäu Alps within 48 hours, and even up to 140 liters in congested areas. In Hesse, there is a risk of flooding in some areas due to heavy rainfall over the course of the week.
It will be the coolest in the north with four to nine degrees, otherwise the temperatures are usually in the two-digit range – between ten and 14 degrees.
For a walk at Christmas, don’t forget your umbrella. In Berlin, visitors to the “Christmas 2022 in the Tierpark” campaign can get into the Christmas spirit with projections and millions of lights.
Image: dpa
Mostly rainy and mild at Christmas
On Christmas Day there are longer sunny periods in the south with temperatures between nine and 15 degrees. In the north and east, the thermometer shows five to nine degrees with overcast skies and frequent rain.
The forecast for Monday is also windy and rainy. Temperatures remain mild between seven and eleven degrees in the northern half and nine and 14 degrees in the southern half. The wind will be moderate to fresh, strong gusts are possible in the north and in the middle.