The storm, nicknamed “Nadine”, raged across Germany, with the Hanover area and the North Sea coast among the worst hit regions. On the coast, there were reports of winds of up to 140km/h, enough to be classified as a hurricane on the Beaufort scale.

The weather knocked out large swathes of the transport network, knocking out several high-speed rail routes. Lines between Hanover and Kiel, Bremen and Hamburg and Osnabrück and Löhne were all suspended until Friday morning, a Deutsche Bahn spokesperson said.

There were also disruptions on other national and regional services, leaving DB forced to provide trains as accomodation for stranded passengers in Dortmund, Hanover, Braunschweig and Berlin.

Frankfurt Airport briefly suspended all activity on Thursday afternoon, with approximately 150 inbound and outbound flights affected.

At Berlin’s Olympiastadion, spectators at the Athletics European Championships were told to remain in the stadium after the end of the action for safety reasons, while fallen trees were reported in North-Rhine Westphalia, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland.

Temperatures will return to highs of around 30 degrees in the next few days, the German Weather Service (DWD) reported, Nadine will be followed by a warm front named Kevin.