Fire crews had been called to over 350 scenes – mostly in the capital and its surroundings – until Tuesday morning after an extraordinary storm showering the country with 1.5 months of rain during a period of a couple of hours hit Hungary yesterday evening.

Large quantities of rainfall accumulating on roads caused public transport vehicles and private cars to get stranded, with some drivers being rescued from their vehicles by firemen, a spokesman for the national disaster relief directorate said on public television on Tuesday morning.

Márton Hajdu explained that fire crews were called to over 350 spots until Tuesday morning, mostly from the capital and the surrounding suburbs, but disaster relief teams also had to help clear the damage on the southern shore of Lake Balaton and in several settlements across Somogy county. Problems were caused largely by the unusual amount of rain suddenly pouring down, broken branches and collapsed trees, the spokesman said. Due to the excessive amount of rainfall expected also for Tueasday, the National Meteorological Service has issued a continued warning for several counties. According to the rain alert sent to the state news agency MTI on Tuesday morning, over 20 millimetres of rain is expected to fall during the day in Fejér, Győr-Moson-Sopron, Komárom-Esztergom and Veszprém counties.

Late yesterday evening, several Budapest underpasses were flooded with rainwater and several neighbourhoods on the Pest side of the city were experiencing power cuts, the spokesman for ELMÜ, Hungary’s national electricity supplier said. Mainly in the capital’s historical centre, cables and transformation stations in cellars were flooded with water, causing safety mechanisms to automatically swith off the power supply. Traffic lamps were out of operation along stretches of the Grand Boulevard, on Kálvin tér and also several spots in Buda yesterday night.

Showers and rainstorms are expected for Tuesday east of the River Danube, with daily rainfall believed to amount to between 20 and 40 millimetres. In certain areas of the Northern Great Plain and the country’s northern mountains, the quantity of rain could even reach 60 millimetres. Temperatures in the afternoon are expected to reach 20-26 °C in the afternoon and 16-21 °C late in the evening, according to projections.

via mandiner.hu

photos: Noémi Bruzák/MTI