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WEATHER

Flash flood soaks resort village in the Vaud Alps

Flash floods hit villages in the Vaud Alps and parts of the Bernese Oberland following a rainstorm late Tuesday afternoon.

Flash flood soaks resort village in the Vaud Alps
Les Diablerets seen in more clement conditions. Photo:Wikimedia Commons

Les Diablerets, a mountain resort town in the canton of Vaud at an altitude of 1,200 metres, was among the communities most affected by the heavy downpour that lasted around half an hour.

Basements of numerous buildings were flooded, including the tourist office.

“There is between 20 and 30 centimetres in the cellar," an employee of the office is quoted saying by 20 Minutes online.

“It’s like a swimming pool.”

Small streams burst their banks and the town’s main road was flooded.

Pierre-Olivier Gaudard, a Vaud cantonal police spokesman, told the ATS news agency that no roads were closed as a result of the rain.

“There is just debris to clear,” he said.

“There is more fear than harm.”

The storm followed a hail and rain storm a day earlier that struck Saxon, a village in the canton of Valais, devastating apricot orchards and flooding basements of 20 buildings.

The extremely localized storm damaged around two-third of the apricots grown in the village, ATS reported.

While not all of them were destroyed, those damaged will not be able to be sold as top quality fruits, and many will be used for juice, jams and eau de vie, the news agency said.

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WEATHER

IN PICTURES: ‘Exceptional’ Sahara dust cloud hits Europe

An "exceptional" dust cloud from the Sahara is choking parts of Europe, the continent's climate monitor said on Monday, causing poor air quality and coating windows and cars in grime.

IN PICTURES: 'Exceptional' Sahara dust cloud hits Europe

Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service said the latest plume, the third of its kind in recent weeks, was bringing hazy conditions to southern Europe and would sweep northward as far as Scandinavia.

Mark Parrington, senior scientist at Copernicus, said the latest event was related to a weather pattern that has brought warmer weather to parts of Europe in recent days.

“While it is not unusual for Saharan dust plumes to reach Europe, there has been an increase in the intensity and frequency of such episodes in recent years, which could be potentially attributed to changes in atmospheric circulation patterns,” he said.

This latest episode has caused air quality to deteriorate in several countries, Copernicus said.

The European Union’s safe threshold for concentrations of PM10 — coarser particles like sand and dust that that can irritate the nose and throat — has already been exceeded in some locations.

A picture taken on April 8, 2024 shows a rapeseed field under thick sand dust blown in from the Sahara, giving the sky a yellowish appearance near Daillens, western Switzerland. – An “exceptional” dust cloud from the Sahara is choking parts of Europe, the continent’s climate monitor said, causing poor air quality and coating windows and cars in grime. (Photo by Fabrice COFFRINI / AFP)

The worst affected was the Iberian Peninsula in Spain but lesser air pollution spikes were also recorded in parts of Switzerland, France and Germany.

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Local authorities in southeastern and southern France announced that the air pollution threshold was breached on Saturday.

They advised residents to avoid intense physical activity, particularly those with heart or respiratory problems.

The dust outbreak was expected to reach Sweden, Finland and northwest Russia before ending on Tuesday with a shift in weather patterns, Copernicus said.

The Sahara emits between 60 and 200 million tonnes of fine dust every year, which can travel thousands of kilometres (miles), carried by winds and certain meteorological conditions.

The Spanish Canary Islands off the coast of northwest Africa saw just 12 days within a 90-day period from December to February where skies were free of Saharan dust, the local weather agency Aemet had reported.

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