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WEATHER

Icy bise wind causes travel chaos in western Switzerland

Winds of up to 140km/hr brought already chilly temperatures down even further in French-speaking Switzerland on Tuesday, disrupting trains and traffic and causing ferry services on Lake Geneva to be cancelled.

Published: 18 January 2017 09:01 CET
Icy bise wind causes travel chaos in western Switzerland
The bise caused glacial scenes in Nyon on Tuesday. Photo: Catherine Nelson-Pollard/ Livinginnyon.com
Gusts of 93km/hr were recorded in Nyon and 87km/hr in Geneva, with temperatures of around -10C making it feel especially Siberian. But that was nothing on La Dôle in the Jura, which registered 142km/hr and -30C, according to MeteoNews.
 
The conditions created problems for road, rail and lake travel. 
 
Snowdrifts brought traffic to a standstill on the A1 motorway between Aubonne and Rolle on Tuesday afternoon, with police having to employ de-icing machines to free up the roads, reported news agencies.
 
Trains between Lucerne and Geneva airport, as well as some local services, were cancelled towards the end of the day after the rails froze. 
 
And the Compagnie Générale de Navigation (CGN), which operates ferries on Lake Geneva across to France, cancelled three of its commuter services early on Wednesday morning citing ice and strong winds. 
 
 
One canny tweeter, who describes himself as a social media specialist from Lausanne, took advantage of the situation to poke fun at the controversial burqa posters launched last week against the facilitated naturalization of third generation foreigners.
 
The bise, which did not affect German-speaking parts of the country nearly so much, is likely to weaken on Wednesday, though it won't be until Wednesday night and Thursday morning that the wind is expected to die down to a more manageable 40km/hr, said MeteoNews.
 
Temperatures will remain below zero across Switzerland for the rest of the week.
 

Source: MeteoSuisse
 
 

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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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