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SPORTS

World Cup ski season delayed due to ‘heavy snowfall’ on Swiss-Italian border

International Ski Federation officials said the decision was taken "to guarantee everyone's safety" at the cross-border venue of Zermatt-Cervinia.

Published: 11 November 2023 14:12 CET
World Cup ski season delayed due to 'heavy snowfall' on Swiss-Italian border
The ski resort of Cervinia on November 11, 2023 after the men's downhill event was cancelled due to strong winds and heavy snow in Zermatt-Cervinia. Photo: Marco BERTORELLO/AFP.

Strong winds and “heavy snowfall” on Saturday caused the delayed opening round of the men’s World Cup skiing season to be cancelled at the controversial cross-border venue of Zermatt-Cervinia.

International Ski Federation officials said the decision was taken “to guarantee everyone’s safety” at the course which straddles the Swiss-Italian frontier.

“Due to the heavy snowfall from last night and this morning, together with the strong winds, (we) have decided to cancel today’s downhill race,” organisers said a statement. There was no indication whether Sunday’s scheduled second race would take place.

If the race does get the go-ahead, it will mark the start of the 2023/24 season after the traditional curtain-raiser, planned for Soelden in Austria at the end of October, was cancelled due to high winds.

The Zermatt-Cervinia event, which will be the first cross-border race in the history of the World Cup, starting in Switzerland and finishing in Italy, had already been overshadowed by environmental issues.

Olympic downhill runner-up Johan Clarey denounced work on the site as “nonsense” with “huge helicopter resources and human resources to fill in the crevasses and make the track acceptable”.

“The conditions on the glaciers are getting worse every year,” said the 42-year-old, who retired in May.

Swiss newspaper ’20 minutes’ reignited the controversy in October with its pictures of diggers carving up the Theodule glacier to prepare the Gran Becca course.

Urs Lehmann, president of the Swiss Ski Association, said the articles were “deliberately biased… at a time when climate change and sustainability have become central issues”.

“Nobody would have skied on a glacier for decades,” without bulldozers to make them safe, he added. But Zermatt-Cervinia is a further illustration of the artificialisation of the mountains to host sporting events, even though the effects of global warming are spectacular.

At the 2022 Olympic Games in Beijing, snow machines were needed to provide a suitable surface on otherwise dry slopes.

Helicopters and snow trucks were used in 2017 to prepare the legendary Austrian downhill at Kitzbuehel.

Two women’s downhill races are also scheduled for Zermatt-Cervinia next weekend. The events were cancelled last year because of lack of snow.

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WEATHER

Switzerland braced for more violent storms this weekend

After a few sunny days' reprieve from severe weather, Switzerland will experience more thunderstorms this weekend raising fears of further localised floods.

Published: 28 June 2024 15:54 CEST
Switzerland braced for more violent storms this weekend

Swiss federal weather service MeteoSchweiz reported that sunny conditions are expected across most of Switzerland on Thursday and Friday.

However, violent storms and even hail showers are forecast to return on Saturday afternoon, with more developing throughout Sunday.

Image: https://www.meteoschweiz.admin.ch/#tab=forecast-map

Dangerous storm conditions are most likely in the cantons of Geneva, Vaud, Neuchâtel, Jura, Basel-City, Basel-Land and north-west parts of Bern, according to the meteorological service. 

The storms pose a moderate threat in the remainder of Bern, Ticino, Lucerne, Aargau, Appenzell Outer Rhodes and Appenzell Inner Rhodes.

Alpine areas are the most likely to be affected by rain, thunder and lightning, while the lowlands will experience milder and drier conditions.

MeteoSchweiz reports that weather conditions will then improve across the next week. 

Severe weather disruptions

The forecast comes after parts of Switzerland were subjected to severe thunderstorms and rain over the past seven days. 

On Saturday, June 22, storms in the canton of Graubünden left police searching for three missing hikers in the Mesolcina Valley and forced dozens of residents to be evacuated amid fears of flooding and landslides. 

Also in Graubünden, the A13, an important motorway connecting Switzerland’s north and south, was also severed by landslides and flooding near the town of Lostallo.

The motorway will completely closed until July 10, when one lane will be reopened. It is not expected that all lanes will be operational before the end of the year.

In the canton of Valais, the storms also temporarily isolated Zermatt from the rest of the country, as roads were blocked and the Matterhorn-Gotthard-Bahn railway was damaged, necessitating several weeks of repair. 

Similar weather on Tuesday night also led to what has been called ‘the flood of the century’ in the canton of Vaud, where a month’s worth of torrential rain left the town of Morges, on the shores of Lake Geneva under several feet of water.

Better preparation required

The dangerous conditions have led to calls for the country to better prepare for such natural disasters.

Swiss hydrologist Frédéric Jordan told Swiss public radio, RTS, on Monday: “In the last hundred years or so, heavy floods have typically occurred between August and October. 

“However, if we look at the last 12 months, we had a major flood on the Rhône River on November 14, 2023 and one on June 21, 2024, which is quite new,” he explained.

He went on to state that “Switzerland must take note of this new information and adapt.”

Despite fluctuations in weather trends over the past four decades, flooding has cost Switzerland approximately 3.5 billion francs since records began in 1972.

In that period of time, the worst flooding occurred in August 2005, leaving much of the country underwater and resulting in multiple deaths and the evacuation of thousands.

Outlook for the rest of the summer

Meteorologist Roger Perret, of the Swiss weather blog MeteoNews, nevertheless offers hope for those looking for a sunny summer. 

Analysing air pressure, precipitation and ocean temperature data, his ‘Summer Oracle’ predicts warmer, drier weather over July and August. 

He writes: “The record high temperatures of the seas certainly indicate that there will be heat waves, which encourage the formation of Atlantic lows, which will encourage hot south to southwest conditions over central and western Europe.

Perret notes in his blog that his MeteoNews colleague, Fred Decker, offers a similar prognostication 

“July and August would then be largely dominated by the Azores high, which would mean that Switzerland would often have dry, sunny and above-average warm weather. 

“Longer periods of heat are also quite possible. Thunderstorms would occur mainly in the  and would be rare in the lowlands.”

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