Blizzard and lightning ice from this night: Stay at home

This warning was clear: “Replan, stay at home! There is a danger to life on the streets on Thursday and Friday,” said weather expert Dr. Karsten Brandt on Tuesday to BILD. Now it’s clear to him: things will get bad from late Thursday evening.

Brandt to BILD: “The mild Atlantic storm depression hits the cold air mass over Europe, where everything is frozen. And that’s exactly where it becomes dangerous! In the Friday night around midnight this contact line is between called and warm between eastern Lower Saxony, eastern North Rhine-Westphalia, runs across Hesse, Thuringia and Franconia. In this zone it can Black ice and freezing rain give.”

Friday morning between 6 and 9 a.m hike the whole thing further north and east. The warm air is hardly making any progress and is stuck in the west and south of Germany. But the snowstorm pulls through. This could result in a weather phenomenon that is rare for us: a blizzard.

Where the weather gets worst

Weather expert Dr. Karsten Brandt to BILD: “There is massive snowfall in the north and east of Germany with several centimeters of fresh snow. Plus a very strong wind. The snow is blowing away and is constantly being whirled up. You can hardly see anything, just white!”

This also applies in the low mountain ranges: there the snowfall line drops Friday afternoon at 300 to 400 meters, later even deeper. There are hurricane-like gusts in North Rhine-Westphalia, Hesse and Saarland. Brandt: “I explicitly warn you about this Danger to life due to massive fresh snow of up to 40 centimeters, which the models show from Friday to Saturday morning. It can extreme drifts give. These are conditions that we never have in Germany.”

Why the weather can be deadly

You can also get stuck in snowdrifts by car in Schleswig-Holstein, Hamburg, Berlin and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. “Walking on foot, you can lose your orientation and get covered in snow. You immediately get cold, lose your strength and freeze to death. In the low mountain ranges, trees in forests can also break due to snow loads and storms. Power outages are also possible,” says Karsten Brandt. “The warm air gets stuck in the southwest. In the end, the cold air prevails again. It’s a very complex one Weather situation. I would recommend not using the highway.”

New Snowfall in Germany are also forecast for Saturday.