Reutlingen has gone from astonishment to chaos after seeing how a 30 centimeter blanket of snow has painted this German city white in the middle of August. The usual adverse winter weather would have cleaned streets and highways without a problem in winter, but neither the Police nor the maintenance teams were prepared to have to respond to an alert of this type already beginning in August.
With snow plows sitting in sheds until the winter season, hail and sleet have locked down this city of 100,000 south of Stuttgart.
It has been the Firefighters, including several dozen volunteer agents, who have responded to the hundreds of emergency calls made by residents, seeing in many cases the entrances to their homes blocked.
According to the local press, it was all due to a drastic drop in temperatures which, together with strong gusts of cold wind from the north, collided with a mass of warm air, causing this exceptional summer weather phenomenon.
The progressive rise in temperatures left unpublished prints as Police officers and the Fire Department removing the snow in short sleeves before it melted and caused the water to flood the lower areas of the city.
The drastic change in climate is making itself felt in a good part of Central Europe. In Slovenia, at least three people died in floods caused by torrential rains since last night in the north of the country, where several small towns and three campsites had to be evacuated, while some 16,000 homes have been left without electricity.
A woman lost her life in Kamnik, north of Ljubljana, police sources reported.
Further west, in the mountains north of Kranj, the lifeless bodies of two Dutch climbers who had been missing since Thursday were found in the open. The exact cause of his death has not yet been determined.
The authorities have proclaimed the highest danger alert for bad weather after prolonged and heavy rains have created catastrophic conditions in almost the entire Slovenian territory, especially in the north and center of the country.
The flow of several rivers has reached record levels, reported the Arso environment agency, quoted by the local agency STA.
Meteorologists forecast that the rains will continue for the next two to three days.
Already this morning the entire province of Gorenjska, of 2,137 square kilometers, was "under water", according to Klemen Smid, commander of Civil Protection of that northern region.
A few hours later other areas were in the same situation. In Brnik, north of the capital, 200 liters of water per square meter fell in twelve hours, the highest density of rain recorded since there are measurements of this type in Slovenia.
In Menges, 15 kilometers north of Ljubljana, firefighters rescued twenty-two children from a kindergarten when water was up to their waists. Their parents had left them there in the morning because nothing anticipated the possibility of so much rain and flooding.
More than 20,000 people were left without electricity, thousands without drinking water, while the chaotic situation makes it impossible to estimate the exact number of people evacuated or waiting to be rescued by helicopter or boat on the upper floors of their flooded homes.
The mountain rescue service rescued about twenty foreign tourists who had been trapped in campsites or other flooded tourist facilities. Also several hospitals, such as the Begunje Psychiatric Clinic, had to be evacuated. The Slovenian foreign ministry asked neighboring Austria to take in patients from the Koroska region of Slovenia.
Numerous roads and railways are flooded or damaged, there have been numerous landslides and several rivers have overflowed, for which some 250 Army soldiers have come to the aid of Firefighters and Civil Protection.
Also the south and center of Austria have been devastated by heavy rains, which reached 200 liters per square meter and 24 hours in several places close to the Slovenian border, causing extensive flooding.
Responsible for this is a low pressure system over northern Italy that pushes humid air to a wide region further north, Geosphere Austria reported today by issuing a weather alert for the next night and all of Saturday at noon.
"On Saturday night between 30 and 60 liters of rain per square meter will accumulate in many regions. In isolated cases, however, it can rain considerably more due to embedded thunderstorms," said meteorologist Hannes Rieder.
Especially in southern Austria, further flooding and mudslides are to be expected, as the soils are saturated by rain. Weather services have also issued warnings for Croatia, Hungary and Slovakia, in addition to Italy, Slovenia and Austria.
