The longest flood lasted 54 days, and the highest level of a flood on Lake Constance was 6.36 meters. An insight into the flood history of the Lake Constance region.
Areas cordoned off, flooded cellars, damage to buildings. The water levels in Swiss lakes and rivers have been high in recent days: the highest level was declared for the Untersee – a part of Lake Constance – on Tuesday. This means that there is a very high risk of flooding.
Legend:
On the Untersee, people are once again moving around on footbridges.
KEYSTONE/Michael Buholzer
The measuring station showed a little over 5 meters. During the last major flood in 1999, the water level was 62 centimeters higher. And that wasn’t even the highest mark.
While floods today often have the consequences mentioned above and people sometimes even make a pilgrimage to flood areas – keyword disaster tourism – a few hundred years ago such a natural event could mean the difference between life and death.
1566 – Flood, famine, plague
1566 there was a so-called flood of the century. A subsequent adjustment shows that the water level at that time was about 5.8 meters – an event with major consequences: everything that had previously been planted in the flooded fields spoiled. Local food supplies were quickly exhausted and famine was imminent. But the greater danger was another.
The flood also contaminated the drinking water. Mice and rats fled from the water and left cellars and storage rooms and entered people’s houses and apartments. Kitchen waste and animal carcasses rotted in the narrow alleys between the houses – easy food for the rodents – and a breeding ground for diseases such as the plague.
Legend:
The owners usually had to pay for the damage to the houses themselves.
Archive Labhard Steckborn
In the flood year of 1566, 1,000 people died in Konstanz – a fifth of the population. At that time, people believed that such events were divine punishment for their sins. And so it was that the council of Überlingen on Lake Constance, in order to do penance, decided with a heavy heart to forego all carnival events.
From volcanic eruption to flooding
The largest flood in the Lake Constance region to date dates back to 1817 6.36 meters were measured at that time. The flood started with a volcanic eruption. In 1815, the volcano Tambora erupted in Indonesia.
Legend:
Wooden walkways adorn the old town of Steckborn.
Archive Labhard Steckborn
The global annual temperature dropped, and the ash spewed out clouded the sky for years to come. The weather was crazy – it rained on 122 days, snowed on 35 days, and even in the summer it snowed several times. The harvest: once again largely ruined.
Legend:
Since the late 19th century, photographers have offered souvenir photos of natural events.
Archive Labhard Steckborn
In 1817, the snow from previous years melted. The meltwater and a thunderstorm that lasted for days caused the water levels to rise. In Konstanz, the water was about 300 meters inland. Wooden walkways adorned most of the old town.
Legend:
The old town of Konstanz was flooded during the highest flood ever recorded on Lake Constance.
Rose Garden Museum Konstanz
At the same time, food became scarce and the Lake Constance region was hit by famine. People ate dogs, cats and snails out of hunger and even rummaged through the dung heaps of wealthy people in the hope of finding grains.
In the 19th century, science became more important. As a result, environmental disasters were seen less and less as punishment from God. The responsibility for preventing such dangers passed to the authorities and so the Rhine was straightened over a length of three hundred kilometers by 1879. This greatly reduced damaging floods.
| meter | Date of the flood at Lake Constance |
6.36 | July 7, 1817 |
5.91 | 18 August 1821 |
5.76 | 3 September 1890 |
5.57 | June 28, 1910 |
5.55 | June 26, 1926 |
5.41 | June 28, 1965 |
5.38 | July 28, 1987 |
5.65 | 24 May 1999 |
1926 The longest flood to date occurred on Lake Constance. For an incredible 54 days, the water level in Constance was over five metres. At its peak, it measured 5.55 metres.
Legend:
Cycling in floods: This is what it looks like when floods become almost the norm, such as in 1926, when Konstanz was flooded for 54 days.
City Archives Constance