Overflowing underground garages, lightning strikes, fallen trees and hail. The dreaded storm came, but was less violent than predicted. After a brief calming down during the night, the thunderstorm should move from west to north and east during the day.
The storm in Germany calmed down a bit during the night. The damage was less severe than initially expected. Around midnight, the German Weather Service (DWD) initially lifted the existing severe weather warnings. During the night, especially in Franconia, there were still individual, sometimes heavy thunderstorms with heavy rain, small hail and gusts of wind with up to 80 kilometers per hour.
A storm front had previously moved across western Germany. In many places the sky suddenly darkened. There were local heavy rains, thunder and lightning. Heavy rain also fell in the north. In Hamburg, a flooded underground car park had to be pumped out by the fire brigade. In Baden-Württemberg in the district of Ludwigsburg, too, the fire brigade had to pump out cellars and clear streets covered with mud.
From Friday afternoon, the DWD expects in parts of North Rhine-Westphalia and northern Rhineland-Palatinate to Brandenburg and Saxony extreme thunderstorms with severe storm and hurricane gusts as well as heavy rain and hail. There will also be severe thunderstorms in the southwest. In northern and central Hesse, on the other hand, fog is expected in places. The weather will calm down again for the weekend. In the north it remains changeable.
A thunderstorm front had already reached North Rhine-Westphalia in the afternoon on Thursday. The storm had moved across the southwest near Aachen and then across the Rhineland, Münsterland and the Ruhr area. Later, the thunderstorm front moved further across South Westphalia in the direction of East Westphalia-Lippe. Because of the storm, rail traffic to the neighboring Netherlands was temporarily interrupted. Late in the evening, Deutsche Bahn reported on Twitter that international long-distance trains between Amsterdam, Cologne and Frankfurt were again on the move without restrictions.
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