Sahara air moves over Central Europe. In the coming week there is a risk of temperatures above 40 degrees in Germany, in parts of North Rhine-Westphalia it could be 46 degrees. Thursday starts with warm temperatures and isolated thunderstorms. Nevertheless, forest fires threaten. Follow all important weather reports here in our ticker.
3:43 p.m .: Hundreds of pigs died in a fire in a Lower Bavarian fattening farm on Thursday morning. According to initial estimates, the damage could amount to up to two million euros. According to the police, the fire was discovered around 4:15 a.m. in the Essenbach plant, northeast of Munich. First, a stable burned. “Despite the rapid and large deployment of firefighters, the fire spread to other stables and agricultural buildings,” it said.
The flames were extinguished after about three hours. The exact number of dead animals was not initially known. It was also unclear how many pigs were kept in total on the farm. The cause of the fire was still unclear in the morning.
Around 700 piglets died in a traffic accident in Lower Franconia on Tuesday. A pig transporter had overturned on Autobahn 3 near Wiesentheid. Only about 200 of the 900 transported piglets survived the accident.
3.20 p.m .: In view of the high temperatures and drought, the NRW Ministry of Agriculture warns of an increased risk of forest fires. The ministry and the state forest and wood agency announced on Thursday that areas of spruce damage, on which storms, drought and bark beetle infestation have led to an increase in dry wood residues, are particularly at risk. As a precaution, the smoking ban in the forest, which applies from March to the end of October, is strictly observed. According to new recommendations from the state, the fine for violations should increase from 80 to up to 150 euros.
In 2021, the state agency registered 79 forest fires nationwide, which destroyed a forest area of almost 5.8 hectares. Most of the fires are caused by people, the statement said.
12.15 p.m .: The heat and the long-lasting drought cause the risk of forest fires to increase extremely in the southwest. On Thursday morning, the forest fire risk index of the German Weather Service (DWD) showed the highest risk level 5 for almost the entire country. This was not the case in any other federal state. Above all, the persistent drought in connection with wind is a dangerous combination, warned the DWD. The meteorologists expected up to 35 degrees in the southwest on Thursday.
In Baden-Baden, the authorities once again pointed out that open fires and smoking in the forest are generally prohibited until October 31st, and even barbecuing in designated areas with fireplaces is not permitted until further notice. In addition, the forest service asks that cars not be parked over dry leaves or grass because hot catalytic converters could set the dry ground on fire. Also, no smoldering cigarettes should be thrown away.
“We hope for the understanding and help of the forest visitors to protect our already very polluted forest from the danger of a forest fire,” says the forestry office. At the same time, it announced controls and, if necessary, criminal consequences.
In Gerabronn (Schwäbisch Hall district), a 4.5-hectare barley field burned down completely on Wednesday afternoon. According to the police, the fire broke out when the 66-year-old owner wanted to harvest it with a combine harvester. The fire brigade was able to prevent the flames from spreading to other grain fields.
Thursday, July 14, 8:00 a.m.: Lots of sun and occasional thunderstorms: In many parts of Germany, people can expect summer temperatures and plenty of sun on Thursday. According to the German Weather Service (DWD), it gets particularly hot in the south, in Breisgau it can get up to 35 degrees. It will be less warm in the north with maximum values between 18 and 21 degrees, in the rest of the country 22 to 28 degrees are to be expected.
In general, the forecast from North Rhine-Westphalia to Brandenburg predicts a lot of sunshine. A few showers and short thunderstorms are possible near the coast and in the eastern low mountain ranges. According to the meteorologists, there can also be strong thunderstorms locally in Bavaria. In the evenings it will be cooler across the country with lows of 8 to 17 degrees.
Friday will be a little cooler across the country, but it will remain summery and mostly dry. In the north, the maximum values are 22, in the middle 25 and in the south 30 degrees. There may be isolated showers on the coasts. As far as the temperatures are concerned, there will be almost no change over the weekend.
The new week will bring heat again: According to the 10-day outlook from the German Weather Service, peak temperatures of over 35 degrees are possible in some places on Tuesday and Wednesday.
10:19 p.m .: In the coming days, people in Germany will be able to keep their bathing suits at hand, the temperatures will rise again: The German Weather Service (DWD) in Offenbach expects hot summer weather “at times and in certain areas”. A high has spread across Central Europe and is increasingly bringing warm to hot air from the south into the country. However, fire brigade experts warn of large vegetation fires.
Due to the persistent drought, wind and the heat expected in the next few days, fire brigade experts in Germany are warning of large vegetation fires. “It is to be feared that the situation could become even more dangerous than in the disaster year 2018,” said Ulrich Cimolino, chairman of the forest fire working group in the German Fire Brigade Association (DFV), on Tuesday in Berlin. At that time, forest fires and drought in Europe caused damage of 3.9 billion dollars.
High “Iosif” creates a high summer feeling, especially in southwest Germany, said meteorologist Marcel Schmid from the DWD on Tuesday. “Up to 31 degrees are expected there today and up to 34 degrees tomorrow.” But in other regions it is also summery in many places with maximum values between 25 and 30 degrees. On Thursday there may also be a few short showers, especially on the coasts and in the western, central and eastern low mountain ranges. According to the meteorologists, there can be thunderstorms in the mountains, some of which can be strong in Bavaria.
The cold front of the North Sea depression “Anij” then leads to a temporary cooling. “On Friday and Saturday it will also be close to 30 degrees in the south and southwest, before the heat starts again from France, especially at the start of the new week,” said meteorologist Schmid.
People in Spain can only dream of temperatures like in Germany. A new heat wave will peak between Tuesday and Thursday with temperatures of up to 44 degrees, the Aemet weather service warned. In 13 of a total of 17 of the so-called autonomous communities, the alert levels were yellow, orange and sometimes red on Tuesday.
Tuesday, July 12, 3:52 p.m .: According to experts, the Federal Republic is not prepared for major heat waves. “Germany is not prepared,” Franziska Matthies-Wiesler from Helmholtz Zentrum München told the AFP news agency on Tuesday. There is no overarching legal regulation to react to such climate-related health risks. Health hazards from heat must be given more priority.
Floods caused by climate change, such as in the Ahr Valley, are very much in the public eye. “Heat deaths die quietly,” says Matthies-Wiesler. Hardly any large hospital or university clinic in Germany has concrete action plans for heat protection. Matthies-Wiesler sees a “really big gap” in this. “It’s about protecting patients and those who work there,” says the biologist and epidemiologist. Recommendations alone are not enough.
Only a few municipalities such as Erfurt, Dresden or Mannheim have so far implemented heat action plans. In most cases, it was therefore not possible to involve stakeholders from the health sector, such as doctors, nurses, hospitals and rescue services. According to the expert from the German Research Center for Health and the Environment, the pandemic has increased the problems because the risk groups for corona and heat “overlap”. “The recommendation that, for example, mobile care services or neighbors look after the elderly during heat waves could not be implemented, at least in the lockdown summer of 2020,” says Matthies-Wiesler.
In addition, the clinic staff work with protective clothing and masks in Corona times even under difficult conditions. Last but not least, there is currently a lack of staff in the clinics due to corona diseases and other infections to also check on the patients at particularly high temperatures. “It’s not just about providing drinks, but also to see if patients in need of help are actually drinking.” This also applies to nursing homes.
Sunday, July 10, 7:56 p.m .: Germany is facing the next heat wave regionally. However, it is not yet possible to reliably say how hot it will actually be, emphasizes Jacqueline Kernn, meteorologist at the German Weather Service (DWD), on Sunday. However, calculations by the GFS global weather forecast model believe that record temperatures across Europe are possible from the end of next week: 46 degrees in parts of North Rhine-Westphalia, 48 degrees in central France and over 40 degrees in Great Britain. Temperatures above 35 degrees are not normal in Central Europe, certainly not 40 or more.
Metereologist Özden Terli writes on Twitter: “I’ve never seen such temperatures for Germany in a weather model.” But Terli, Kernn and Jan Schenk, metereologist from “The Weather Channel”, say that a reliable forecast for the next weekend is still cannot be reliably met. A model forecast for Monday, July 18 currently shows temperatures between 28 and 46 degrees across the country. While it remains the coolest on the Baltic Sea coast, over 40 degrees could threaten throughout NRW. The model of the European Center for Medium-Range Forecasts is somewhat more cautious and forecasts maximum values of 36 degrees. “It is still uncertain whether it will really be 40 degrees,” says Schenk. “Several days with temperatures above 30 degrees are safe.”
However, the forecasts are relevant for the next few days up to the coming weekend: It is getting warmer and warmer, temperatures will drop slightly on Thursday and Friday, until record heat could then threaten at the weekend, according to the forecast by “The Weather Channel”.
In addition, apart from the extreme north and extreme south, there is currently a severe drought. “In some regions in western and southwestern Germany, not a drop has fallen this month,” said Kernn.
Health Minister Karl Lauterbach wrote on Twitter at the weekend that older and sick people must be protected from the heat wave. “Liquid supplies, fans, talk about the importance of hydration. Be available.” He also feared fatalities.
In the years 2018 to 2020, high summer temperatures led to thousands of heat-related deaths in Germany, according to a recently published study. For the first time since the beginning of the investigation period in 1992, excess mortality due to heat had occurred in three consecutive years, researchers from the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), the Federal Environment Agency (Uba) and the German Weather Service (DWD) wrote in the “Deutsches Ärzteblatt” at the beginning of July. . High temperatures can put a lot of strain on the cardiovascular system, among other things, and exacerbate existing symptoms such as respiratory diseases.
The President of the Brandenburg State Farmers’ Association, Henrik Wendorff, expects a below-average grain harvest this year according to an initial assessment. “We had zero rainfall in March. I have never experienced a month without rain. The stocks had come out of the winter well developed. And then March came without rain and with a lot of wind. April and May were not rainy either. That will leave its mark,” said Wendorff of the “Märkische Oderzeitung” (Print/Saturday). He estimates that there will be a below-average harvest – “just like in previous years”.
At harvest time he is hoping for dry days. “But we are now happy about any rain, no matter when it falls. We take every drop. Even if it sometimes interferes with the work processes,” Wendorff told the newspaper.
The state farmers’ association announced in June that it was expecting that this year’s grain harvest of 2.5 million tons would not be nearly the same as last year’s.
When asked what role the irrigation of the fields played in view of the drought, Wendorff said: “We only have the opportunity to irrigate about one percent of the entire area of the country.” The systems for this are available and also the water rights. “But: Irrigation costs money, for the purchase of the technology, for its operation.” In addition, not all crops can be irrigated because the additional yield often does not cover the costs. “As a rule, special crops such as potatoes and field vegetables are irrigated. However, this is a very small proportion of the total cultivation in the country. Irrigation is not a solution for all crops.”
Tuesday, July 5th, 2:38 p.m .: Europe is most severely affected by stronger heat waves in the entire northern hemisphere. Heat waves over Europe increased three to four times faster than in the other northern central latitudes such as the USA or Canada, as the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) announced on Tuesday. These extreme hot spells are related to double jet streams and their increasing duration over Eurasia.
An international team of researchers evaluated observation data from the past 40 years and showed for the first time that this rapid increase is related to changes in the atmospheric circulation. The so-called jet stream, a fast-moving band of wind that flows around the northern hemisphere from west to east at an altitude of about ten kilometers, is changing.
States in which the jet stream splits into two branches and thus forms double jet layers did not increase in number, but persisted longer. According to the study, this explains almost without exception the increase in heat waves in Western Europe and the approximately 30 percent more heat waves in the entire European region.
According to the researchers, one possible explanation for the increasing duration of the jet streams is the increased warming of the high latitudes, especially over land regions such as Siberia, northern Canada and Alaska. In the summer, these regions would have warmed much faster than the Arctic Ocean. This increasing temperature difference between land and ocean favors the persistence of double-jet conditions in summer.
In western Europe, the weather systems usually come from the Atlantic and therefore have a cooling effect. However, if the double jet does occur, the weather systems will be deflected northwards, experts say, and sustained heat waves could develop over western Europe. In other European regions, such as the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe, heat waves are more likely to be related to dry soils.
“Summer heat waves are not a new phenomenon per se – what is new, however, is that extreme heat events have occurred more frequently and more intensely in Europe in recent years,” explained Efi Rousi, lead author of the study. From the PIK scientist’s perspective, it can be expected that ” it’s going to get worse.”
Monday, July 4th, 12:39 p.m .: After the summer weekend, the weather conditions are now changing again. The Azores High is expanding northward and an omega layer is forming, pushing the cool air towards us. It can even snow on the Zugspitze.
In the first days of the week, the warm air can remain in the south, so that summer values of around 25 degrees are still possible. But in the middle of the week, the cold air will flood all of Germany.
A large omega layer is created that stretches from Newfoundland to Europe – one of the most stable weather conditions in our latitudes. At the same time, hot air is sent to Spain and Great Britain. And that in turn amplifies the high pressure area in the upper atmosphere. The resulting weather conditions last for at least a week and it therefore remains rather cool. The maximum values are between 18 and 28 degrees.
On Thursday the snow will come to Germany again. The snow line drops to almost 300 meters and this could mean the first snow in July on the Zugspitze.
You can find out more about this in the weather video:
Monday, July 4, 11:22 a.m .: The police discovered and recovered the body of a 17-year-old kayaker who capsized on Lake Tegernsee on Saturday and has been missing since then. With the help of a diving robot, the young person was located and found dead on Sunday, the police headquarters in Upper Bavaria South said on Monday in Rosenheim. It was a tragic accident.
The young person from the Fürstenfeldbruck district and his father each had their own kayak on Lake Tegernsee on Saturday. When the father was back on land, he noticed that his son’s boat had capsized. Despite an immediate emergency call and a large search operation, the young person could not be saved alive.
3:02 p.m .: The German Weather Service (DWD) warns of severe storms in the north-east of Germany. Seven districts in two federal states are affected.
Brandenburg
Mecklenburg-Vorpommern
According to the DWD, individual thunderstorms are brewing in the districts. There may be heavy rain, heavy gusts of wind and hailstorms.
6:21 a.m .: There can be severe thunderstorms in Saxony-Anhalt early on Friday morning. Lightning strikes are to be expected locally, as reported by the German Weather Service (DWD). Trees could also be uprooted and roofs damaged. In addition, temporary traffic delays are possible.
You can find more information about the weather conditions on the following pages.
