Holidaymakers in Frankfurt were left disappointed on Wednesday, 16 August after heavy rainfall flooded the runway and led to around 70 flights being cancelled.

Frankfurt Airport runway floods

Passengers at Frankfurt Airport were stranded on Wednesday evening after heavy rain covered the runway and plane parking area.

Travellers were left waiting around after the flooding meant that they were unable to disembark from landed planes. In the airport, around 70 flights were cancelled and in the air, 23 approaching aircraft were diverted.

The disruptions affected around 1.000 passengers and the airport decided to close its doors two hours early, at 9pm on Wednesday night, in order to avoid further chaos.

25.000 lightning strikes over one hour in Hesse

The inclement weather responsible for the disruptions had been forecast by the German Weather Service (DWD) to pass over Hesse on Wednesday evening.

According to Hessische Rundfunk, meteorologists have now announced that the DWD recorded over 25.000 lightning strikes during a one-hour period on Wednesday night.

The heavy lightning was accompanied by up to 60 litres of rainfall per square metre and gale-force winds of 81 kilometres per hour in some areas of the region.

Similarly extreme, stormy weather has been passing over various federal states over the past week. In Stuttgart, a thunderstorm on August 13 lead to the death of a man who was struck by lightning, while heavy thunderstorms crossed Berlin on Tuesday night.

Thumb image credit: Pradeep Thomas Thundiyil / Shutterstock.com