Snow disaster in Northern Germany in 1978

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Snow winter 1978/1979
General weather situation Northeast location with the meeting of polar air and humid, mild air over Central Europe (both events)
Data
Beginning December 30, 1978 / February 13, 1979
The End January 3, 1979 / February 18, 1979
Lots of snow New Years Eve 70 cm (Ostholstein, January 1, 1979 06 UTC )
Annual amount of snow up to 100 cm ( February 16, 1979 )
Annuality (total) ≈ 50
consequences
affected areas FRG: Northern Germany

GDR: entire territory

Damage amount BRD: at least 140 million  marks

GDR: approx. 8 billion marks economically

The snow catastrophe in Northern Germany 1978/1979 was a snowfall with blizzard in Northern Germany at the turn of the year 1978/1979 of extraordinary extent. A second event in February 1979 also led to severe disabilities in large areas of northern Germany.

Such a weather situation for Northern Germany is very unusual (see Climate in Germany ). The snowstorm at the turn of the year was called a disaster . There were also disaster alerts for the February event.

December / January event

Soldiers Clearing Snow in Neubrandenburg (January 2, 1979)

Weather situation and sequence

Over Christmas there was a thaw all over Germany. There were maximum temperatures of 10 to 13 ° C along the Rhine. The German Alps were free of snow up to an unusually high distance, rivers in the foreland were flooding. At the turn of the year 1978/79, northern Germany experienced an onset of winter , the extent of which could not be foreseen at first. At the end of December 1978, the temperature differences in Europe worsened; A stable high pressure area over Scandinavia, built up over the course of several weeks, and a low pressure area from the Rhineland touched over the Baltic Sea . Air from high pressure areas generally flows into low pressure areas; it rotates clockwise around the core of the high in the northern hemisphere and is pushed away from it: a massive cold snap began.

At the rear of the low-pressure area, mild air flowed from the Atlantic to France and southern Germany; over northern Russia and northern Scandinavia the temperature was widespread below −30 ° C. A sharp air mass boundary formed over the southern Baltic Sea and moved south. The temperature difference on December 28th was extreme: −47 ° C in the Swedish province of Norrland encountered the Central European warm air with its relative humidity of over 90 percent. The extreme weather began on December 29, 1978 when Gdansk was already measuring −18 ° C and 1 m of fresh snow. In the northern part of Schleswig-Holstein it began to snow in the afternoon and on Rügen in the evening, while it was still raining heavily south of the Eider , and 15 ° C was measured in Freiburg . Roads and even a motorway became impassable in the evening. During the night, the initially thick snowstorm, which gradually covered the whole country, turned into a full- blown snowstorm that raged with winds of up to 10 and lasted for five days. The Baltic Sea off Sassnitz froze over completely within a few hours, at the same time there was a Baltic Sea storm flood . Snow depths of up to 70 cm were recorded in Ostholstein . Within a few hours, temperatures dropped by 20 ° C.

On December 29, the day in Berlin started with up to 8 ° C. Then cold air seeped in, the temperature dropped 5 degrees within just an hour. In the evening it was already frosty, but it was still raining there at −5 ° C. The cold air was so heavy that it was pushed as a thin layer under the overlying, milder air from which it was still raining. It reached the southern low mountain range of the GDR and Hesse on the morning of December 30th. A low approaching from France provided a temporary relief, combined with rain and black ice. After it had withdrawn to the east, the next gush of cold air reached its rear on December 31, 1978. It began to snow heavily in Berlin and a strong easterly wind of force 8 was blowing. The center of the cold with temperatures as low as −23 ° C was now between Berlin and Dresden. In Ust-Shchuger in the Russian foothills of the Urals in the northeast of the continent, -58.1 ° C was measured, the lowest recorded temperature in Europe to date . In Berlin, New Year's Day 1979 was the coldest on record at −18.6 ° C in the morning; In the Thuringian Forest there was a drop in temperature of up to 32 K. Due to the strong contrasts in air pressure, the northeast wind was blowing with storm force. On New Year's Day the cold air reached the Alps. In the late morning of January 1, the storm gradually subsided in the north, while the cold penetrated through the Netherlands and Belgium to France. Two lows from Scotland and over the Polish Baltic Sea brought slight frost mitigation and renewed heavy snowfall on January 2nd, which penetrated into the southwest of Germany in the evening. On the night of January 3, the temperature on Rügen was still −15 ° C.

On January 3, a low caused frost to weaken and more snowfalls. Another 15 cm was added in Putbus .

consequences

Snow and ice armor in Warnemünde a few days after the snow storm (January 9, 1979)
Icy Kiel Fjord
Ice floes on Schönberger Strand

General

The consequences were serious. Meter-high snowdrifts brought road and rail traffic to a standstill; many localities were cut off from the outside world. The Rügen dam became impassable on the night of December 30th due to snowdrifts up to 5 m high. 12,000 residents and 3,000 guests were isolated from the mainland. A train was trapped in the snow on Rügen for more than 48 hours. After all, on Rügen (e.g. in the Prora barracks ) there were plenty of military personnel equipped with heavy equipment. At the request of the SED district leadership, this moved out to provide aid on December 30th. A supply of the residents from the air was only possible from January 1st due to the strong storm. The most important traffic routes could only be used as a makeshift route after several days. Even those who died during these days could not be buried in the snow chaos on Rügen.

In Denmark, vehicles stuck with tanks had to be towed free on the night of December 30th. The situation in the Schleswig-Flensburg district, where many localities were cut off, was similarly dramatic. For a while, Flensburg itself could not be reached by road or rail. The motorway border crossing to Denmark was closed for several days. The first deaths in the north of the FRG were already on New Year's Eve.

In many places, electricity and telephone networks failed because ice sheets up to 30 cm thick were placed around the lines and many electricity and telephone poles collapsed under the weight of the ice and the rattling of the storm. The municipalities' evacuation vehicles could no longer cope with the snow masses, so that the Bundeswehr or the National People's Army and the Soviet Army stationed in the GDR were deployed with tanks to at least reach broken down vehicles and trains, or to bring emergency and maternity doctors to the patients. However, the storm kept blowing snow onto the streets that had just been cleared. Road salt had no effect at the low temperatures. Likewise, the islands were no longer accessible and left to fend for themselves. Small livestock perished, the failure of local bakeries led to a shortage of bread. In addition to the aid organizations, electricity suppliers and Deutsche Bundespost and Deutsche Post also struggled with the snow masses to put electricity and telephone lines back into operation.

On January 2, 150 West and 50 East German villages were still isolated from the outside world and were supplied from the air. Many farms suffered from the blackout and the freezing cold. Many cows could not be milked by machine. The milked milk had to be fed to the cattle or partly thrown away because it could not be picked up. Husum was supplied from the air on January 3rd. On the evening of January 3, the border to Denmark, which had been closed since December 30, 1978, was reopened and the strict ban on the use of private vehicles that had been in force for several days was gradually lifted.

FRG

A coordination of the aid was initially not possible because a cooperation between municipalities, aid organizations, the army, electricity suppliers and post in the federally organized FRG was never planned: There were no common radio frequencies on which one could communicate. In addition, the telephone lines were initially interrupted, so that people were cut off from the usual command structures on site and had to rely on their own initiative. Where technical expertise existed, radios and radios were tampered with to solve the communication problem. The Bundeswehr hastily stationed equipped radio tanks of the telecommunications force as relay stations in the disaster area; this was the first application of the emergency laws passed a few years earlier in the Federal Republic. The Bundespost asked its employees in the Association of Radio Amateurs of the Deutsche Bundespost (VFDB) for help. Radio amateurs from Schleswig-Holstein and the surrounding area started emergency radio operations, thus enabling the helpers to coordinate with one another. Emergency services vehicles could no longer run on the snow-covered roads either; The Bundeswehr used its all-terrain ambulance and took over almost all of the civilian rescue operations. In some cases, mothballed vehicles from Bundeswehr depots were activated. Because of the prevailing "Cold War", the Bundeswehr was significantly larger then than it is today; Like the NVA, it was in vacation mode, but basically ready for action and prepared to quickly mobilize troops and technical equipment.

Tanks from Bavaria were used in North Friesland and fishing to clear the streets. However, they did not succeed in doing this; in many places the tanks got stuck. After the storm subsided on January 1st, the first power lines could be repaired after the fitters were brought there by helicopter.

In Hamburg , too, there were considerable traffic problems for days - for example, in January and again in February 1979, the trains of the electric Hamburg S-Bahn had to be partly pulled by diesel locomotives because the busbars were iced or snowed over. The Bundeswehr deployed replacement buses and helped clear the railways.

In the Federal Republic of Germany a total of 17 people died as a result of the events. The damage amounted to 140 million Deutschmarks. Here it was not so much industry, but mainly agricultural businesses and private individuals who were the victims.

GDR

December 1978 was mostly wet and mild in the GDR , the opencast mines there were softened, so that lignite production in that month was only 75% of the plan. Wolfgang Mitzinger , one of the deputies of the GDR Energy Minister Klaus Siebold, was solely responsible in the ministry on December 29th. While it was still measuring almost +10 ° C, it received weather warnings and explosive reports from the meteorological service. Instead of the appropriate, highest deployment level III, which would have required an operational staff to be called up immediately, he initially only proclaimed level II, because one could not imagine such an onset of winter, and he had been accused of having acted overcautiously in the past.

The icing of the overhead lines and the points of the coal railways led to the interruption of the lignite transport in the Lusatian lignite area . Since 75% of the electricity in the GDR was generated from lignite and the storage bunkers of the power plants had only small reserves, large parts of the electricity and district heating supply collapsed within 24 hours . Due to the high water content (up to 60%), the lignite froze in the pits and in the railway wagons. Mechanized unloading was no longer possible. The government of the GDR sent thousands of workers with hand tools to Lusatia to remove the icy lumps of coal from the wagons. She offered to get necessary tools, no matter where from. For example, following a request from the GDR main energy dispatcher, 500 rotary hammers were delivered to the GDR within a few hours from the West German Otto dispatch department . They could be used successfully. The breakthrough came, however, only from the jet engines of decommissioned MiG-17s mounted on vehicles , with which the coal that was frozen in the wagons was thawed. However, these required large quantities of kerosene and the intense heat damaged the wagons. Explosive charges were also used to break the coal out of the wagons.

In East Berlin and in the NVA district of Strausberg, the catastrophic situation, especially on Rügen and in Poland, was first only casually noted and assessed as regional problems, especially since there were enough military on Rügen. On New Year's Eve, Siebold had the coal supply concentrated on the power plants and the briquette factories went into holding operation. The central disaster commission in the Council of Ministers met on the night of the New Year in the presence of Erich Honecker , Willi Stoph and other high-ranking members and gave the order for the NVA to be deployed on New Year's Day, a Monday, at 4:00 a.m. A total of 25,000 soldiers from the West German army and more than twice as many from the NVA were deployed. Both in the north of the GDR and the FRG, curfews and driving bans were issued.

Even on New Year's Day off work, only half as much energy was available as was needed. Gas production also fell. The grid frequency of normally 50 Hz sank more and more, a hitherto unprecedented, complete collapse of the entire GDR power grid was approaching threateningly. To avoid this, "Plan X", a previously never implemented instruction for extreme emergencies, was available in the filing cabinets of the energy suppliers. It was only through large-scale shutdowns that an approximate balance between generation and consumption that was necessary to maintain the network frequency could be maintained. Support from the COMECON energy network "United Energy System Peace" was not to be expected because this was also close to collapse. The shutdowns were assessed by experts as the lesser evil compared to a complete collapse of the GDR power grid. As early as on New Year's Eve 1978, the electricity was temporarily switched off in Leipzig and Rostock, as well as in rural areas on the Baltic Sea, shortly after the turn of the year, for example in the high-lying Oberhof , which means that even though temperatures as low as −28 ° C were measured there , Heaters failed.

Finally, in the afternoon of New Year's Day, the instruction came from Berlin to implement "Plan X" in the districts of Suhl, Erfurt and Gera immediately: 2.5 million people were without electricity within three minutes; the total network collapse could be averted with this radical measure. Even the local border with the FRG was dead; a threatening request by the Erfurt border troop commander to switch on the electricity for the border installations was rejected by the responsible dispatcher with a reference to emergency power generators that were available there (apparently due to neglected maintenance). The Stasi appeared on the same evening in the control room responsible for the three districts in Erfurt and collected the shift books there.

The gas supply was cut off on January 1st at noon for another 150,000 consumers. The only large power plant that delivered electricity at full capacity these days was the Lubmin nuclear power plant . Some of the workers there were brought and picked up by army helicopters for their shift changes.

On January 2, 12,000 members of the armed organs supported the buddies in the Senftenberg Revier alone; the district delivered 2/3 of the planned amount of coal. On the night of January 3, the cities of Leipzig, Erfurt, Gera and Suhl got electricity again; At that time, Rügen was still without electricity. A large part of Thuringia could be switched on on January 3rd, but the last villages there only on January 5th. From January 4th gas was everywhere again. The industry had to struggle with energy rationing until mid-January.

Several heavily pregnant women on the island of Rügen were flown to Stralsund in military helicopters to give birth; all mothers and children survived. On January 6th around 6 p.m. the Rügen dam was passable again.

At least five people died in accidents in the GDR. Official statistics are not known. Another research gives 18 dead and 440 injured in over 700 traffic accidents alone; Plus the people who froze to death on Rügen in a snowstorm and in snow-covered cars, or were run over by tracked vehicles. 40,000 piglets and calves as well as 90,000 chicks froze to death because the barn heating or heat lamps failed. Sheep on the Darß, for which there were no stables, survived the days of snowstorm outdoors. After they could finally be rescued, hungry wild boars attacked them at their feeding points, sometimes with fatal consequences.

The East German economy had to bear the consequences of the winter of 1978/79 for years. The greatest damage was caused by the power outages, including to blast furnaces. The GDR's national coal reserve was dissolved on January 3, 1979. To replenish them, the GDR then spent 200 million currency marks on hard coal coke from the FRG. The total damage as a result of this onset of winter, which particularly affected industry, was given as 8 billion marks. The State Security registered a sharp decline in the population's trust in the government, but damaged it itself by confiscating all important documents about the energy crisis. She also described it as "shocking" that the tightly managed planned and national economy, although it had been in existence for 30 years, was so fragile. Energy Minister Siebold was dismissed; and Mitzinger his successor. After the economic disaster had been overcome to some extent, it was heroized in the form of a wave of awards on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the GDR.

On the coasts

As a result of the northeast storm, the port cities of Flensburg , Eckernförde , Kiel , Lübeck , Wismar , Stralsund and Rostock also had major flood problems , which culminated in more and more ice floes stacking up in the ports and bringing shipping traffic to a complete standstill. An unoccupied excursion ship capsized. The streets near the port were covered in ice, cars were partially frozen in the ice up to the edge of the door. By New Year's Day there were already twelve deaths in West Germany.

In North Friesland , soldiers and equipment from reconnaissance squadron 52 from Leck were used to clear the B 5 and B 199 federal highways ; primarily to keep the road connection to the district hospital in Niebüll free. The squadron also provided accommodation for civilians in the General-Thomsen-Kaserne in the municipality of Stadum .

February 1979

On February 13, 1979 - the drifts from the event six weeks before had not yet thawed - there were again heavy snowfalls and snow drifts with similarly serious effects.

This time, the renewed slump mainly hit southern Schleswig-Holstein as well as large parts of Lower Saxony and the three northern districts of the GDR and again triggered disaster alarms in all districts of Schleswig-Holstein. Ostfriesland was hit even harder this time than the first push. This time, too, the disruption continued until the end of the week. Again there was a storm flood in the Baltic Sea, 1.6 meters above normal in Flensburg. There were also fatalities again.

Climatological classification of the snow winter 1978/1979

In mid-March 1979 there was a third snow wave, at the end of March and beginning of April there was considerable thaw floods.

The winter is one of the ten hardest winters of the post-war period in northern Germany. With 67 days of closed snow cover (December 28, 1978 - March 4, 1979) the season set a record since the famine winter of 1946/47 . In terms of mean snow depths, it was only exceeded by the winters 1984/85 and 1986/87. With regard to the temperatures ( cold sum - added negative daily mean temperatures - of 258 Kelvin), the winters 1962/63 (398), 1969/70 (327), 1995/96 (293), 1984/85 (279) and 1986 / 87 (259) even harder; the four war and post-war winters were recorded in 1946/47 (506 Kelvin), 1939/40 (504), 1941/42 (425) and 1940/41 (282).

See also

literature

  • Volker Griese : Schleswig-Holstein. Memories of History. Historical miniatures , Norderstedt 2012, ISBN 978-3-8448-1283-1 [in it the chapter: No winter fairy tale. The "snow catastrophe" 1978/79 ]
  • Helmuth Sethe: The big snow - the catastrophic winter 1978/79 in Schleswig-Holstein. 17th edition. Husum Verlag, Husum 2009. ISBN 978-3-88042-074-8
  • Reconnaissance Wing 52 Chronicle . 1st ed., Clausen and Bosse, Leck 1993.
  • Holger Frerichs: The white flood in Jeverland. The snow winter 1978/79 in the northern district of Friesland. Pictures, reports and memories. Verlag Lüers, Jever 2008, ISBN 978-3-9812030-3-5 . With DVD by Jürgen Eden.

media

  • Katja Herr : The disaster winter 1978/79 - When the east sank in snow. Documentary, Germany, MDR 2003.
  • The white violence. Documentation, in-house production, Landkreis Aurich, 1979, DVD 2007 ( Weblink , landkreis-aurich.de; trailer for the DVD )
  • Katja Herr: The Snow Chaos 1978. A film from the ARD series: Protocol of a catastrophe . Documentary, Germany, MDR 2014.
  • Gerald Grote , Claus Oppermann: Yesterday's news . The private view of the snow disaster 1978/79. Documentation, 8mm cinema , DVD 2008, nominated for Best Documentation , North German Film Award 2009.
  • Katja Herr: Six days of the ice age - the catastrophic winter 1978/79. Documentary, Germany, MDR 2018.

Web links

Commons : Winter in Germany 1978/1979  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Meteorological:

Local reports:

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Graphic and table Weblink climate disaster: weather data
  2. ↑ Graphic Fig. 4, web link Tiesel: Snow catastrophes winter
  3. ↑ a b c Weblink Tiesel: Snow catastrophes winter
  4. ↑ Interview of the MDR with the weather observer of the GDR weather service, Thomas Globig, who was then active in Berlin, seen on November 21, 2019 at https://www.mdr.de/zeitreise/schwerpunkte/video-257166.html
  5. ^ ASU World Meteorological Organization: Global Weather & Climate Extremes
  6. ↑ a b c d e f g Six days of the ice age - the catastrophic winter 1978/79 | Video | ARD media library. Accessed January 1, 2020 .
  7. ↑ Emergency radio # 28. December 1978 - Snow disaster in Northern Germany
  8. ^ Lars Brüggemann: The Hamburg S-Bahn. From the beginning until today , Freiburg 2007, p. 33f.
  9. ↑ Vereiste coal , contribution to the multimedia set that time in East Germany , MDR, 2004, ISBN 3-89830-782-4
  10. ↑ mdr.de: That was the catastrophe winter of '78 / '79 in Oberhof | MDR.DE. Accessed January 2, 2020 .
  11. ↑ Aufklärungsgeschwader 52 Chronik , 1st edition 1993, p. 211
  12. ↑ a b c Thomas Sävert: Report on the snow storm in February 1979 . In: Forces of Nature.
  13. ↑ Weblink Sävert: Winter 1978/79
  14. ↑ Weblink: Society for Schleswig-Holstein History: The Great Snow. Section Event of the Century the Second