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WEATHER

Friday’s storms cause flooded streets and mudslides in Austria’s Vorarlberg

Many streets and areas of Vorarlberg in western Austria have flooded following heavy rain on Friday that continued overnight.

Published: 20 August 2022 13:26 CEST
Flood and water damage in the Villach-Land district of the Carinthia state, Austria, on June 29, 2022. Photo: GERT EGGENBERGER / APA / AFP
Carinthia has once again been hit with severe storms and heavy rain, after being battered several times already in 2023 by severe weather. (Photo: GERT EGGENBERGER / APA / AFP)

Cellars and garages were full of water, underpasses were flooded and there were also some landslides, the police and fire brigade said on Saturday.

However, the situation eased after midnight and no-one was hurt.

A section of the Rheintal motorway and the train line from Dornbirn towards the state capital Bregenz were temporarily closed. The lower valley area was particularly badly affected.

The recent drought has meant that water levels have been very low in the area’s streams and rivers, but these soon turned into torrential rivers on Friday afternoon as the rain poured down.

In the village of Wolfurt, the town centre was flooded after streams burst their banks.

Water levels at Lake Constance rose by 21 centimetres from Friday morning to Saturday morning.

weather map austria

On Saturday, there is further rain forecast for most parts of the country in the afternoon, especially on the northern side of the Alps from Vorarlberg to Upper Austria and western Upper Styria, according to Austrian weather service ZAMG.

There will be showers overnight on the northern side of the Alps and in the north, while other parts of the country will remain dry until midnight when further rain is expected in Lower Austria, Vienna and the northern half of Burgenland. 

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WEATHER

After mini tornado and floods should Austria expect a summer of extremes?

Extreme weather events have become more common and more dangerous worldwide. This week Austria experienced some of its own extreme weather with thunderstorms and even a 'small' tornado hitting the country.

Published: 22 May 2024 17:27 CEST
After mini tornado and floods should Austria expect a summer of extremes?

Heavy rainfall led to flooded cellars and muddy roads in Lower Austria on Tuesday afternoon.

In Styria, Graz residents recorded what seemed to be a tornado in the city (the head of the Styrian meteorological agency later confirmed a “small” tornado there), with large amounts of rainfall causing havoc.

Austria’s meteorological institute Geosphere Austria had already warned of thunderstorms, some of them heavy, moving north through the country—an alert that included the possibility of landslides and flooding. 

The warnings have been plentiful. Recently, experts alerted that global warming would make extreme weather events much more frequent and stronger, as The Local reported.

Summers, in particular, could see torrential downpours, hail storms as well as heat waves. 

Four heatwaves occurred in 2023, two of which lasted an unusually long time, lasting up to 18 days (July) and 16 days (August).

READ ALSO: How to protect yourself during storm season in Austria

So what about this summer?

There is nothing to indicate that people in Austria will have some relief this summer.

In fact, it has been a warmer than average year so far, with record temperatures throughout. According to Geosphere Austria, the recent winter was one of the two warmest on record.

February followed the trend, and it was the hottest in Austrian history. Parts of Austria also saw record heat in March, while there was “summer in April” in the Alpine country. GeoSphere Austria expects the country to be heading towards a hotter summer season also in 2024. 

Already in June, the probability of above-average temperatures is 60 percent.

In July, above-average temperatures will occur in about 60 percent of the cases. The probability of average temperatures is 20 percent, the same as the chance of below-average temperatures. 

The probability of above-average temperatures in August is just under 80 percent. Average temperatures occur in about a quarter of the cases, and the likelihood of below-average temperatures is less than 10 percent.

READ ALSO: What is Austria’s official emergency-warning phone app and do I need it?

The institute does point out that a seasonal forecast is not an exact forecast in the sense of a 3-day overview but a “rough estimate of the average temperatures conditions in the Eastern Alps”. 

It may seem counterintuitive to think that Austria could be heading for a summer of drought and heavy rains. Still, experts explain that the hotter temperatures make extreme events more likely.

And Austria is more affected by warming than the global average, mainly because it is located in the middle of the continent, and land masses warm up faster than oceans. 

Because of that, the Alpine Republic has already been 2C warmer on average over the last 30 years, almost twice as much as the global temperature increase compared to pre-industrial times.

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