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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

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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