The heat was followed on Sunday afternoon by numerous severe storms in some parts of the country, including large hailstones up to seven centimetres in diameter – almost the size of a tennis ball. Lower Austria and Tyrol were particularly badly hit.
In Vienna, midsummer record temperatures of almost 36 degrees made for wonderful bathing weather on Sunday. In the early evening, however, the first dark clouds appeared here too and the first heavy rains occurred.In other federal states, violent thunderstorms with heavy rain and hailstorms had already occurred long before.Cooling down in Lower AustriaFor example, in Lower Austria, temperatures dropped to a maximum of 23 degrees and caused a considerable cooling down.Huge hailstonesImages showed huge hailstones in the Waldviertel, which were probably around four to six centimeters in diameter. Severe damage to buildingsA violent hailstorm also hit the district of Waidhofen ad Thaya. Waldkirchen ad Thaya was particularly hard hit.In the cadastral communities of Waldkirchen, Gilgenberg and Rappolz, around 80 percent of the buildings were damaged, some seriously, the district command reported in a press release.Over 100 firefighters were deployed to temporarily seal the roofs with tarpaulins. The affected districts were officially declared disaster areas.Tyrol: Heavy thunderstorms with serious consequencesIn Tyrol, there were some heavy thunderstorms with serious consequences late on Sunday afternoon. The lowlands were particularly affected, especially the Kufstein district. There were brief power outages for 8,000 network customers in the communities of Kramsach, Radfeld, Brixlegg, Reith im Alpbachtal, Alpbach and Rattenberg. In the latter community, water also penetrated the town center. In addition, the Achenseestrasse (B 181) in the Schwaz district was blocked by a mudslide.At peak times, around a hundred transformer stations in the Kufstein district were without power, according to the network operator Tinetz. By the evening, most of the outages had been repaired. The cause of the power outages was apparently a heavy storm.Lucky in misfortune for Austria’s smallest townRattenberg, Austria’s smallest town, was apparently lucky in misfortune. “You could say we were almost drowned,” explained Mayor Bernhard Freiberger to the “Tiroler Tageszeitung”. The cause was the widespread power outage. “We are dependent on a pumping station with four pumps. The entire sewerage system depends on it. Because the station failed due to the power outage and it rained so much, the water in the city quickly rose to 50 to 60 centimeters,” said Freiberger. A catastrophe could only be prevented by the emergency services’ quick action. “Within around 15 minutes, the emergency generator was connected to the grid and the pumps were started up again,” said the mayor. The city got off relatively lightly, but there were several insurance claims in the shops. Landslide near a guest houseThe landslide occurred in the municipality of Eben am Achensee near a guest house. The road was covered in mud over a length of around 35 meters and a height of four meters. The mudslide blocked the road, and the carriageway had to be completely closed in both directions at times. The clean-up work lasted until Sunday evening. The restaurant building was reportedly damaged, but no one was injured. Several mudslides also occurred in Auffach in the municipality of Wildschönau (Kufstein district). According to the police, numerous municipal roads were blocked by fallen trees, meaning that several residents were cut off from the outside world for the duration of the clean-up work.
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