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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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Will Switzerland be visited by 'Ice Saints' this year?

From May 11th to the 15th, a meteorological event takes place each year in Switzerland.

It “observes”, though admittedly not on scientific basis, a centuries-old weather phenomenon called “Ice Saints”.

What exactly is it?

As its name suggests, it is related to saints, as well as ice and frost.

The saints in question are St Mamertus, St Pancras, St Servatius and St Boniface.

According to a weather lore, once these Ice Saints have passed through Switzerland in the middle of May, frost will no longer pose a threat to farmers and their land.

As the official government meteorological service MeteoSwiss explains it, “spring frosts have been a regular occurrence for centuries, giving rise to the traditional belief that a blast of cold air often arrives in the middle of May. Over time, this piece of weather lore became known as the Ice Saints.”

Fact versus myth

You may be wondering whether the Ice Saints lore actually has basis in reality.

Records, which date back to 1965 and originate from the Geneva-Cointrin, Payerne, and Zurich-Kloten weather stations, “clearly show that, over the long-term average, frost directly above the soil is only a regular occurrence up until the middle of April”, MeteoSwiss says. “After that, the frequency with which ground frost occurs progressively declines to almost zero by the end of May.”

“We can conclude, therefore, that there is no evidence in Switzerland to confirm the Ice Saints as a period in May when ground frost is more common.”

However, MeteoSwiss does concede that “ground frost is nevertheless a regular occurrence throughout May as a whole…having occurred at least once or twice in May every year, and in around 40 percent of the years there were more than two days in May with ground frost.”

What about this year?

MeteoSwiss weather forecast for the next seven days indicates that, this year too, no frost will be present on the ground in mid-May.

In fact, temperatures through much of Switzerland will be in double digits, reaching between 18C and 25C, depending on the region.

You can see what to expect in your area, here.

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