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WEATHER

Ticino cities brace for more rain — and flooding

The canton of Ticino in southern Switzerland is bracing for further flooding after two weeks of rain with more precipitation forecast in the region for Saturday.

Published: 13 November 2014 21:28 CET
Ticino cities brace for more rain — and flooding
Photo: City of Locarno

On Thursday, residents got a break from the deluge that has inundated basements, closed roads and forced evacuations of medical patients in Locarno and surrounding areas.

The sun shone for the first time in three days but civil protection workers continued to prepare for more high water, the ATS news agency reported.

A team of 50 workers has installed temporary elevated walkways to allow pedestrians in Locarno to navigate flooded streets.

The city said that boats and rafts have also been available to help residents get around, while traffic has been diverted from affected roads.

In the past two weeks close to 500 millimetres of rain has fallen on Italian-speaking Locarno, MeteoNews reported.

In Robiei in the western part of Ticino 555mm of rain has been measured, while Lugano registered 399mm.

By comparison, 53mm of rain fell in Bern and 50mm in Zurich over the same period.

The level of Lake Maggiore, which traverses the Swiss-Italian border, is at its second-highest level in 150 years, according to reports.

Civil protection workers say they have used a technical program developed by a local university (SUSPI) that has allowed them to visualize the impact of precipitation on flooding, ATS said.

That allowed them to plan the evacuation and relocation of 80 patients from a Locarno medical clinic, 50 metres from the edge of lake Maggiore, earlier this week.

Close to 600 residents in Ticino have been impacted by flooding, while a landslide in a rural area west of Lugano last week swept a house down a hillside, killing a 31-year-old woman and her three-year-old daughter.

Rain has also played havoc south of the border in Italy.

On Wednesday, a 70-year-old man drowned in the southern part of Lake Maggiore at Ispra, after falling in the water while trying to secure his boat, local media reported.

At least four other people have died in northern Italy in incidents related to the latest rain storms, while 60 schools were closed in the Milan area, according to a report from AFP. 

See also: FIFTH PERSON DIES IN LATEST ITALIAN STORMS

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WEATHER

Why are there so many weather-related disasters in Switzerland this summer?

From mudslides to flooded hiking trails, several Swiss regions have suffered serious weather-related damage during this year’s summer season.

Published: 14 August 2024 13:40 CEST
Why are there so many weather-related disasters in Switzerland this summer?

In the past weeks, frequent spells of extreme weather claimed lives and caused considerable material damage in several regions of the country.

Among them:

In June, parts of Switzerland, including the canton of Graubünden and the resort of Zermatt in Valais, were hit by huge floods, which claimed the lives of three people and left buildings and roads destroyed.

They were triggered by a violent thunderstorm that unleashed the rivers, causing a rock and mud avalanche in the municipality of Misox.

Additionally, landslide of mud and rubble destroyed a part of the north-south axis of the A13 motorway.

Areas of Valais and Ticino were also among those badly damaged by storms, with three people dead and five missing in the latter canton; the upper Val Maggia remained cut off from the rest of the country and without water and electricity for days.

And just this week, two people were injured in a massive storm in Brienz (canton Bern) and 70 others had to be evacuated from their homes, after the Milibach river overflowed after heavy rains, carrying stones, boulders and wood, which caused a water collector above the village to flow uncontrollably.

Buildings, parked vehicles, roads and public transport infrastructure were damaged.

Also, more than 620 trails –1,300 km in total – had to be closed to hikers due to heavy rains and flooding that hit some regions of the country at the end of June. 

READ ALSO: Hikers in Switzerland warned as hundreds of trails close

Why has this been happening?

“The summer of 2024 has been marked by particularly bad weather,” said meteorologist Felix Blumer. “There is one or two damaging thunderstorms every summer, but this year, there have been lot of them.”

There is a scientific explanation for this phenomenon: according to Blumer, most of the summer so far, the weather in Switzerland has been dominated by low pressure areas.

“It is precisely the low pressure situations that are important, with the summer solar radiation, the ground heats up very strongly. The warm, light air can rise, cool down, condense – resulting in showers and thunderstorms.”

In a simple(r) language, low pressure gives way to warm air and rainstorms, which explains the high number of strong and destructive thunderstorms.

Is the weather this summer really more ‘extreme’ than in the past?

According to Thomas Schlegel from Switzerland’s official weather service MeteoSwiss, “due to the extreme events that have occurred so far, 2024 will certainly go down in history as a year with a lot of bad weather and damage.”

He also cited “exceptional” lightning activity during the thunderstorms: over 70,000 lightning strikes were recorded — more than during a typical summer.

In fact, two people who were working in a field in Fribourg during one such lightning episode in July, were struck and injured, along with a police officer and a REGA pilot who came to their rescue. 

What’s ahead, weather-wise?

MeteoSwiss’ eight-day weather forecast predicts more rain and thunderstorms, ranging in severity, in various Swiss regions. 

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