Offshoots in Salzburg

Floods keep southern Germany on tenterhooks

The Ingolstadt area is under water.(Bild: Ayhan Uyanik)

Concerned glances go to our neighbors in Bavaria, where thousands of emergency services are battling the masses of water. The foothills also reach Salzburg: numerous flooded cellars had to be pumped out in Flachgau on Monday.

A glance at Bavaria makes many in Salzburg shudder: Just a few hundred kilometers from the border, torrential and widespread rain has been falling for days. 40,000 emergency personnel and 800 soldiers from the German army are on site to help with evacuations. A disaster alert has been issued in several districts and the helpers continue to fight, doing everything they can to save lives.

These are scenes that Salzburg knows all too well: the flood years of 2002, 2013, 2019 and 2021 have not been forgotten. This time, the weather in this country is more merciful. "It's always about the direction of the low. The band was further to the west," explains meteorologist Alexander Ohms. The Italian low is one of the "classic rain bringers" in our region. Moist Mediterranean air meets cool layers, accumulates on the northern edge of the Alps and is "really squeezed out" there.

The Salzach in Hallein-Rif: the water levels are high, but there is no threat of flooding.(Bild: Tröster Andreas)

Salzburg should get off lightly
The water masses in Salzburg were still limited over the long weekend: Saturday was the peak day, especially in the north. In the provincial capital, 55 liters of rain fell in 24 hours. On Sunday evening, heavy rain also fell in the mountain regions. In Mittersill, the Salzach briefly reached the reporting limit of almost four meters. As head of the Mittersill fire department, Kurt Kollmann has a trained eye for the threat of flooding: "As long as it's this cold and it's snowing far down in the mountains, there's still no great cause for concern," he says happily.

According to weather experts, however, there is no complete all-clear: in Bürmoos and Dorfbeuern, more than 90 cellars had to be pumped out on Monday. Bürmoos in particular was hit hard, with flooding of a few centimetres up to 1.5 meters again coming from the Kaiserbach.

"Cells of heavy rain can form very locally. But there is no widespread rain," says Ohms. Local heavy rain showers are becoming increasingly dynamic. Ohms: "Since the 1980s, the amount of rain that falls in the same period has increased by 20 percent."

Because the soil can no longer absorb moisture and water levels are generally high, minor flooding is possible. However, rivers such as the Saalach or Salzach are much more sluggish and are unlikely to reach peak levels.