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Storm instead of a white Christmas: Christmas markets closed

Rain and wind instead of a white Christmas: The foothills of a low pressure system will bring a lot of rain and storms to North Rhine-Westphalia on Thursday. Even over the Christmas holidays, there are no rays of hope in sight, said Martin Schönebeck from the German Weather Service on Thursday....

A gap in the clouds has formed behind a windsock standing in the storm. Photo.aussiedlerbote.de
A gap in the clouds has formed behind a windsock standing in the storm. Photo.aussiedlerbote.de

Storm - Storm instead of a white Christmas: Christmas markets closed

Rain and wind instead of a white Christmas: The foothills of a low pressure system will bring lots of rain and storms to North Rhine-Westphalia on Thursday. Even over the Christmas holidays, there are no rays of hope in sight, said Martin Schönebeck from the German Weather Service on Thursday. "It's actually just going to keep raining for now," said the meteorologist. He also said: "You can forget about a white Christmas." With temperatures between 8 and 13 degrees during the day and no frost at night, it will simply be too mild for that in the coming days.

However, it will be particularly windy this Thursday: North Rhine-Westphalia is currently on the edge of a storm depression that is moving over Scandinavia. "It's enough for us to get a lot of wind here," said Schönebeck. "There is a widespread threat of wind speeds of up to 85 kilometers per hour. Showers and thunderstorms could also bring heavy gusts of up to 100 kilometers per hour in some places in the afternoon and isolated hurricane-force gusts," said the meteorologist.

As a precaution, several Christmas markets were closed on Thursday for this reason, for example in Essen and Duisburg. Düsseldorf closed from the afternoon.

It will also remain very rainy and windy at the weekend and over the Christmas holidays. "It won't be quite as much as today, but you can always expect strong and stormy gusts," said Schönebeck. He is not hopeful that the precipitation expected in the coming days will come down as snow. At best, one or two centimetres of snow could fall in the very highest areas of the Sauerland on Friday night. But even that threatens to melt away quickly.

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Source: www.stern.de

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