Flash flooding in Bavaria, Austria as heat wave breaks

Fire departments in Bavaria were kept busy overnight as storms and heavy rains prompted flash floods with drains and the dry earth unable to cope with the sudden precipitation.

Basements flooded, trees were blown over on public roads, and police reported several road traffic accidents related to aquaplaning (when there's so much water under a vehicle's tires that it severs the car's contact with the road and causes the driver to lose all or almost all control).

Firefighters reported that rainwater was running off fields and meadows towards streets, homes and basements.

The German Weather Service (DWD) had issued storm warnings for much of the country overnight. 

It said on Saturday that the extent of the damage overnight had been less serious than feared, but kept its highest storm warning level in place for the southeasternmost tip of Bavaria for Saturday. 

Bavaria's flooding alert service said that streams and rivers that had been at dangerously low levels were filling up rapidly as water ran off the soil and into the tributaries. However, it said that "in mid-sized and larger rivers" that were more accurately monitored, "the quantities of rain have so far only led to a few isolated cases of burst banks." 

It warned, however, that the unusual dry-then-wet weather would make accurate flood predictions and warnings extremely difficult. 

Level 1 storm warnings, on a scale going up to four, are in place for virtually all of Germany on Saturday, with level 2, 3 or 4 warnings in parts of eastern and southern Bavaria.

Neighboring Austria also hit hard

Southeastern Bavaria borders Austria, which was similarly affected overnight. Police said that accidents caused by falling trees killed five people, two of them children, and injured 11 more. 

The state of Vorarlberg reported numerous streets and areas that were hit by flash flooding, as well as some localized minor landslides. However authorities also said that nobody was hurt and that the situation had started to ease by midnight. 

A local highway and rail line were temporarily closed. Rail connections in the affected areas faced continued disruptions early on Saturday. 

Much of Germany still waiting for meaningful rain

Earlier in the week, several days of heavy rain had been forecast for most of the country. 

However, so far, this has only materialized in the south, and to a lesser degree, in the east of Germany.

In most of the west and north of the country, some rain did fall either late on Friday or in the early hours of Saturday, but only in moderate quantities.

A hot and dry summer has prompted warnings from agriculture and also particularly from the shipping freight industry, with water levels on the crucial Rhine River at their lowest since the last similar dry spell in 2018. 

The notorious shallow point of Kaub on the Rhine, south of Koblenz and north of Mainz, has become a core measuring point for the river. 

By 5 a.m. on Saturday, the Federal Waterways and Shipping Administration (WSV) said the benchmark water level had risen to 42 centimeters, 10 centimeters higher than the same time the previous day. The figure being measured here is not the literal depth, but the depth against an extremely shallow benchmark that counts as 0. 

With heavy rain falling for upstream in the south of Germany and rain still forecast in the areas around Koblenz, Bonn, and Cologne further downstream, the Rhine's levels are currently forecast to steadily recover over the weekend — refilling by around 1 meter — to reach much more typical levels again by the start of next week. 

msh/sdi (dpa)