2013
Styria flood
Short Description
Detailed Description
From the 30th of May to 2nd of June 2013 heavy and prolonged rainfall led to flooding over a large area of Austria.
During this 4-day period measured precipitation levels reached values between 250 and 365 mm. As the month of May had been cool and wet and precipitation had been falling repeatedly in the days beforehand, the soil was already noticeably saturated and the high precipitation sums resulted in an extreme flood event.
In the mountainous regions of Austria, the high precipitation amounts led to numerous sediment transport events such as landslides and debris flow. In fact, more than three-quarter of all events in 2013 occurred within these few days.
Due to the heavy rainfall, rivers reached extreme water levels for example in the Danube, where river discharge levels with a return period of 300 years were reached.
The flooding caused sediment and debris to be deposited in numerous municipalities along the Danube. Mostly agricultural land was affected but also infrastructure and residential areas were flooded.
However, the flooding of residential areas along the Danube could be significantly reduced (compared to the major flood of 2002) thanks to the protective measures built in the years before the event. Furthermore, the rapid action of the emergency services such as construction of mobile flood defence walls could prevent or contain any major flooding. Still, the damages were reported to total around 866 million euros for all of Austria.
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