Snow and slippery roads in parts of Germany on Saturday night caused significant traffic obstructions. For example in the Eifel, where numerous trucks got stuck on the busy B51 or slid into the guardrails, as the police in Prüm (Eifelkreis Bitburg-Prüm) announced. In addition, cross-standing articulated lorries obstructed the clearance vehicles in many places. According to the police, a number of truck drivers “assessed the road conditions too optimistically”. According to the German Weather Service (DWD), the snow and sleet falls on Sunday in Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland. The new week is therefore mostly free of precipitation at temperatures between two and six degrees. Frost only occurs at night in the high elevations of the Westerwald, Eifel and Hunsrück.
Snow and black ice brought numerous trucks to a standstill in Franconia on Saturday morning.
The snow cover on the motorways was too high, the trucks could not start at times and got stuck on slopes, said a police spokeswoman in Lower Franconia on Saturday.
According to the DWD, further, partly heavy snowfalls are to be expected in northern Bavaria for the day.
In the morning, seven trucks were parked across Autobahn 7 in both directions between the Grenzwaldbrücke and the Hammelburg junction.
However, due to the low traffic on Saturday morning, only brief traffic jams formed, according to the police.
Numerous trucks came to a halt
In Central Franconia, too, trucks struggled with snow and slippery conditions: on Autobahn 9 in the direction of Leipzig, a truck blocked the right-hand lane.
The truck slid into the guardrail shortly after the Trockau junction.
On the Autobahn 6 a truck came off the road between Nürnberg-Langwasser and Nürnberg-Ost and drove into an embankment.
The right lane was blocked.
Nobody was injured in the accidents.
The people in North Rhine-Westphalia also have to be prepared for changeable weather with snow and slippery roads at high altitudes and occasional rain in the other areas at the weekend. In the night of Sunday, the snowfall line temporarily rises to around 600 to 700 meters, but then drops back to around 400 meters, as the DWD announced on Saturday. The lowest temperatures in the evening are two to five degrees, on the highest mountains they drop to minus two degrees.
On Sunday it will initially be very cloudy, in some areas there will be some rain.
In the mountains, the precipitation comes down as sleet or snow.
From noon onwards, there is mostly no precipitation in the west of the country, after which the clouds also move away in the east.
The maximum temperatures rise to four to seven degrees, in the higher mountains they are one degree.
Most of the time the wind blows moderately, but stormy gusts can also occur in the mountains.