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WEATHER

Snow closes motorway and mountain pass roads

Snow closed a section of the A2 motorway and the Gotthard road tunnel in the heart of the Swiss Alps on Wednesday afternoon as crews worked to clear lanes for traffic.

Published: 5 November 2014 18:56 CET
Snow closes motorway and mountain pass roads
Photo: Viasuisse.ch

The section of road impacted was from Amsteg in the canton of Uri to the entrance of the tunnel as heavy snow followed a wind storm that passed through the Alps a day earlier, the SDA news agency reported.

In the wake of the storm, snow fell in northern parts of Switzerland at higher elevations, including the Jura Mountains and the Alps, while heavy rain hit the canton of Ticino and the southern parts of Graubünden and Valais.

Roads through several mountain passes were closed, some of them for the season.

Snow shut the Oberalp pass between Andermatt in the canton of Uri and the canton of Graubünden until next spring.

Roads through the Gotthard, Klausen, Furka, Susten, Nufenen, Grand Saint Bernard and Grimsel passes have also closed.

Snow falling at levels as low as 600 metres on Wednesday is expected to continue north of the Alps at altitudes down to 500 metres, MeteoSwiss, the national weather office, reported.

The precipitation follows hurricane-force winds in the Swiss Alps on Tuesday, measured up to 186 kilometres an hour at Titlis, the mountain resort in the canton of Obwalden.

The winds forced the closure of various mountain lifts and caused scattered damage, largely to the roofs of buildings.

A 67-year-old man was seriously injured when a gust of wind blew him off the corrugated roof of a garden shed hut in Sevelen in the canton of Saint Gallen on Tuesday, cantonal police reported.

He fell two and a half metres to the ground and was transported by a Rega emergency services helicopter to hospital, police 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.

Published: 8 April 2024 14:15 CEST
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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