Storm in Berlin on April 14, 1902

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The weather in Berlin on 14 April 1902 was in terms of rainfall and the season ( severe thunderstorms usually occur in mid-summer on) extraordinary. After a downpour, the streets of Berlin were under water for hours; there were dam slides and house collapses to complain about. A total of 166 mm of rain fell in eleven hours; Until 1959 this remained the highest amount of precipitation measured in Berlin on a day.

Course of the storm

The meteorologist Gustav Hellmann (1854-1939) published an article about it in the Meteorologische Zeitschrift , which is reproduced here in part.

Hellmann analyzed

“The extremely violent thunderstorm that broke out on Monday, April 14th, around 3am, lasted until 8.45am and was accompanied by such heavy rain as Berlin has never experienced. (...)

The rain began soon after 3 a.m., was heavy until around 9 a.m., and continued intermittently, but much weaker, until around 2 p.m. During this period of hardly 11 hours, the following were measured:

Flooding of Yorkstrasse on April 14, 1902
  • North of Berlin:
    • Biesenthal: 14.3 mm
    • Blankenburg, 9 km NNE v. Center of the city: 60.0 mm
    • Northrend, 7.5 km N: 86.2 mm
    • Aeronaut. Observ. (in Tegel), 7 km NW: 98.6 mm
  • City of Berlin from N to S:
    • City Pump station X (N Bellermannstr. 7): 137.7 mm
    • Meteorol. Station (N Seestr. 3): 117.8 mm
    • City Pump station IV (NW Scharnhorststr. 9): 166.0 mm
    • Meteorol. Station d. Agricultural University (NW Invalidenstrasse 42): 155.9 mm
    • City Pumping station VIII (NW Alt-Moabit 67): 111.3 mm
    • Meteorol. Institute (W Schinkelpl. 6): 118.4 mm
    • City Pump station V (E Holzmarktstr. 31): 42.1 mm
    • Meteorol. Station (SW Obentrautstr. 8): 92.8 mm
  • East of Berlin:
    • Baumschulenweg, 7.5 km SE: 4.0 mm
    • Rüdersdorf, 28 km ESE: 0.9 mm
  • South of Berlin:
    • Groß-Lichterfelde, 11 km SSW: 54.0 mm
    • Kleinbeeren (district of Großbeeren ), 18 km SzW: 4.3 mm
  • West of Berlin:
    • Westend, 9 km W: 66.7 mm
    • Ruhleben, 12 km WzN: 28.7 mm
    • Spandau, 14 km WzN: 16.8 mm

The differences in rainfall are greatest in the direction from W to E. At the eastern edge of the city the amount is 10-20 mm, 7 km away only 4 mm, and to the east of a line in the direction of Jüterbog - Zossen - Wriezen , just 28 km east of Berlin, it didn't rain at all.

The area of ​​maximum rainfall, with about 150-170 mm, lies in the north-western part of the inner city and is hardly half a square kilometer in size.

But also towards W the drop in the amount of rain is great; because only 11 km west of the maximal area, in Ruhleben near Spandau, only 29 mm are measured.

Of course, the smallest differences are in the direction from NNE to SSW in which the storm has progressed. (...) The recordings of some pluviographs at the municipal pumping stations (...) provide more information about the course of the cloudburst in Berlin itself. (...) The rain seems to have been the most productive (...) between 5 and 6 in the morning. Soon after 6 o'clock (6.10 to 6.16 o'clock is noted) heavy hail fell in a part of the inner city, which lasted until about 6.40 o'clock. It was swept away by the streams of water that had formed in the streets to lower-lying places and into the houses, where it remained until around noon, and in places until the next day, and had to be carried away in dozens of buckets. This hail, by clogging the pipes, etc., certainly contributed to the fact that the enormous masses of water flowed off more slowly and the damage they caused, which can be measured after many hundreds of thousands of marks, was even greater than it would have been if it had just rained. Road traffic suffered considerable disruptions in the morning and even school lessons had to be canceled, which has probably never been seen in Berlin. "

It should be noted that the article refers to the former urban area of ​​Berlin, which until the expansion in 1920 comprised only the immediate center of today. An urban climatic study from 1990 leaves it open as to whether the higher elevations of the Wilmersdorf-Schöneberg-Tempelhof area did not have similarly high amounts of rain as in Pankow and Wedding, which were only not registered due to a lack of measuring points.

Hermann Stade (1867–1932) published an investigation into the storm in which the evening paper of the Staatsbürger-Zeitung of April 14, 1902 is quoted (noted after the scan):

“Around 2 o'clock in the morning (April 14th) the thunderstorm, coming from the northeast, approached the capital of the Reich initially only with lightning and thunder. At around 2 1/2 a.m., light rain set in, followed by a heavy hailstorm in places around 3 a.m. At 3 3/4 o'clock, especially in the southwest, west and center, such ice masses fell that road embankments and sidewalks were covered up to 10 cm high ... At 4 1/2 o'clock finally a torrential rain set in, which initially hit the north in particular . Almost the entire Gesundbrunnen was under water within a few minutes, and the oppressed residents of the basement rooms were often unable to save their furniture. In three cases, firefighters had to be in beds or Weighs to get swimming children out of their dangerous position. And now the flood of water spread over all areas of Berlin. Although all the machines were in operation at all the pumping stations, hundreds of millions of liters of water were being transported to the sewage fields and all emergency exits poured enormous amounts of water into the Spree, the floods from the canals pushed onto the streets like fountains. "

Stade himself writes: “Afterwards, many streets and squares in Berlin were flooded for 3 (8?) Hours and resembled large lakes. In the lower parts of the city, such as B. in Yorckstraße, the water level exceeded 1/2 (?) Meter in the morning hours of April 14th, but also in the higher regions of the north and northeast the water rose to almost 1/2 (?) Meter, so that the residents there were banned into their homes for hours. The pavement was torn open many times, and large amounts of washed-off sand clogged the accesses to the drainage channels; The same problem was caused in many places by the hail, which fell in tremendous masses and was collected by the water flowing along the streets. Extensive, long-lasting floods were the result. Houses collapsed several times as a result of the foundation walls being washed away, and a dam slide took place on the northern runway, which not only led to a multi-day interruption of rail traffic, but also caused neighboring houses to collapse, and sometimes endangered so severely that they had to be evacuated. Numerous lightning strikes were reported from all parts of the city, especially from the north. The tram masts were struck by lightning in many places, and the feeding points burned out several times. As a result of this, as well as the overturning of some of the carrier masts washed down by the water, a disturbance of a magnitude was caused in Berlin tram traffic, as it had not been seen before; not a single tram line was able to continue operations without any interruption. "

Causes of the storm

Since in 1902 only “traditional” weather observations were made close to the ground, the subsequent analysis of the weather situation remains uncertain. “Unfortunately, the kite stations now in Germany were not yet in operation at this time; one therefore has no insight into the air pressure and temperature distribution of the upper air layers, which of course was actually decisive for the direction of the progress of the thunderstorm. ”Neither the investigation by H. Stade nor the synoptic archive of the weather center allow clear conclusions about the causes of the catastrophe to. One possible interpretation is warm air flowing in near the ground, which is stabilized by a high trough. Slight contrasts in air pressure at altitude may have been the reason why the thunderstorm cells moved so slowly and were able to linger over the city for a long time. What is unusual about this is the direction of migration from north-east to south-west, mentioned by Hellmann and supported by the synoptic archive of the “weather center”, which suggests an “east” or “hot air thunderstorm”. This form of thunderstorm is rare (after H. Stade's investigation, the Berlin meteorologists were surprised by the development) and only occurs on quasi-stationary warm fronts that move so slowly that wave formations are possible on them; Stade's indication that there were several thunderstorm cells near and above the city also points in this direction. Thunderstorms of this kind are often characterized by particular violence. In addition, nocturnal labilization due to radiation from the upper cloud limit and the increase in precipitation due to the “ city ​​effect ” may have had a reinforcing effect.

In the climatological series of Berlin only a precipitation value of 67.4 mm is recorded for April 14, 1902, which corresponds to the amount measured at 7 a.m. at the climatic station located in Kreuzberg at the time and does not take into account the individual sums measured at the other Berlin precipitation measuring points. In the period from 1848 (the beginning of the observations by the Prussian Meteorological Institute) to 1983, precipitation sums of 100 mm were exceeded in Berlin only on two further days. Still Reinhard Süring leads the cloudburst of 1902 as Berlin-record in his textbook of meteorology on. The amount of precipitation of 166 mm in the urban area of ​​Berlin is only on 15./16. August 1959 was outbid by the so-called Riemeisterfenn rain when 210 mm fell within 30 hours. On June 29, 2017, the Tegel Forestry Office (station of the city measuring network of the Institute for Meteorology at the Free University of Berlin ) registered the record value for 24-hour rainfall in the area of ​​the State of Berlin. The highest precipitation intensity within the urban area, on the other hand, is the 123.4 mm that fell within just 75 minutes at Berlin-Tegel Airport on the evening of August 25, 2006. Before that, the so-called dormouse storm of 1964 had held the intensity record with 80.8 mm in 2 hours, measured at Berlin-Tempelhof Airport , for 42 years . In Brandenburg, the highest total daily precipitation to date was measured on June 12, 1993 at 255.8 mm in Pritzwalk , while the strongest precipitation intensity occurred on June 29, 1994, when five violent hailstorms passed through Werder (Havel) within only 3 1 / 2 hours 176.7 mm fell.

Contemporary reports

“On April 14th, classes had to be suspended because a torrential storm that raged from 3 to 9 a.m. had made most of the paths inaccessible for pedestrians and wagons, so that when classes started, not a quarter of the students in some classes was present and they too soaked that they could not have stayed in their clothes for hours without the risk of catching a cold. "

A school dropout due to storms has not been recorded in the annals of the grammar school since at least 1880! The high school was at Friedrichstrasse 126.

"Monday, April 14th, classes had to be suspended as a result of a severe storm that hit Berlin in the morning."

"Classes were canceled on April 14th because of the great storm that flooded the courtyards and cellars of the school premises."

For the isolation of the thunderstorm, the measured total precipitation of the nearby weather station Potsdam, which was "only" 26.5 mm, and the observation of the pastor and writer Heinrich Wolfgang Seidel , who was appointed vicar in Boitzenburg , about 80 km north, and from regularly wrote letters there, which were published in book form in 1951. On April 14, 1902, the stagecoach from Berlin came to Boitzenburg many hours late “ and brought terrible news with it about the Berlin downpour. It was such a lovely, transfigured spring day with warm winds and birdsong that we were completely surprised. "

consequences

Together with other Panke floods in 1904 and 1905, the flood was the reason for the planning begun in 1911 for the construction of the north trench , which diverts excess water from the Panke into Lake Tegel.

Damage

The destroyed house in Richter's street.

Much of the precipitation (station values ​​Bellermannstrasse, Scharnhorststrasse) fell in the area of ​​the lower reaches of the Panke . Its river bed, channeled into Gesundbrunnen and Wedding and closely framed by walls, could not contain the water and washed away the foundations of the neighboring houses. Early in the morning a house, number 23, collapsed on Richtstrasse in Wedding. (Today's No. 23, an Art Nouveau building from 1906, is 100 m "inland".)

At General-Pape-Strasse on the border between Schöneberg and Tempelhof , sections of the tram embankment slipped away. A similar landslide blocked the northern runway in the city area.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gustav Hellmann: Wolkenbruch in Berlin on April 14, 1902 . In: Meteorologische Zeitschrift , Volume 19, October 1902, pp. 463–645
  2. ↑ Hans Steinhagen : The weather man. Life and work of Richard Assmann . Findling book and magazine publisher, Neuenhagen 2005, ISBN 3-933603-33-1 , pp. 273-277
  3. ↑ Horst Malberg, G. Frattesi: About the causes of the precipitation structures in the urban area of ​​Berlin . In: Zeitschrift für Meteorologie 40, 1990, pp. 387-394
  4. ↑ Life data according to: Meteorologists from the German-speaking area. A biographical finding aid . Self-published by the German Weather Service Offenbach am Main 1998, ISBN 3-88148-335-7 , p. 109
  5. ↑ a b c H. Stade: The storm in Berlin on April 14, 1902 . S. XXVII
  6. ↑ wetterzentrale.de
  7. ^ Meyers Kleines Lexikon Meteorologie. Meyers Lexikonverlag Mannheim / Vienna / Zurich 1987, pp. 289 and 446
  8. ^ The climate of Berlin (III). Precipitation, humidity, vapor pressure, cloudiness, duration of sunshine, wind, air pressure . (= Treatises of the Meteorological Service of the German Democratic Republic No. 118). Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1976, Tab.6.5, p. 8
  9. ↑ Ruth Maria Bahr: The climate of Berlin (I). History of the meteorological observations of the city of Berlin (= treatises of the Meteorological Service of the German Democratic Republic No. 78). Akademie-Verlag, Berlin (GDR) 1966, p. 24 f.
  10. ^ Peter Hupfer, Frank-Michael Chmielewski (ed.): The climate of Berlin . Akademie-Verlag Berlin 1990, pp. 143-150
  11. ↑ R. Süring: Textbook of Meteorology ("Hann-Süring"), 5th, completely revised edition. First volume. Willibald Keller publisher in Leipzig 1939/1943, p. 476: Berlin N, April 14, 1902, 166 mm
  12. ^ Paul Schlaak: Weather in Berlin from 1950 to 1961 . In: Berlin monthly magazine ( Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein ) . Issue 3, 2001, ISSN  0944-5560 , p. 192 ( luise-berlin.de ).
  13. ↑ wzforum.de
  14. ^ Paul Schlaak: Weather in Berlin from 1962 to 1989 . In: Berlin monthly magazine ( Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein ) . Issue 6, 2001, ISSN  0944-5560 , p. 161 ( luise-berlin.de ).
  15. ↑ met.fu-berlin.de
  16. ^ Friedrichs-Gymnasium zu Berlin. Annual report on the school year Easter 1902–1903, submitted by the director Adolf Trendelenburg. Buchdruckerei Otto Lange, Berlin 1903, p. 14
  17. ^ Askanisches Gymnasium Berlin, report on the school year 1902/1903, submitted by the director Prof. Dr. Buses. Printed by W. Pormetter, Berlin 1903, p. 14
  18. ^ Humboldt-Gymnasium zu Berlin, XXVIII. Report on the school year from Easter 1902 to Easter 1903. Printed by A. Haack, Berlin 1903, p. 19
  19. ↑ https://www.pik-potsdam.de/services/klima-wetter-potsdam/klimazeitreihen/niederschlag
  20. ^ Heinrich Wolfgang Seidel: Three hours behind Berlin. Letters from the Vicariate. Edited by Klaus Goebel, Husum Verlag 2015, ISBN 978-3-89876-770-5 , letter of April 15, 1902 (p. 137)
  21. ↑ Nothing remained as it was - life on the Panke . Mitteilungsblatt zur Pankower Heimatgeschichte, special issue 2013, ed. from the Freundeskreis der Chronik Pankow e. V. , p. 14