October starts with record high temperatures in Switzerland

Weather records have been tumbling around Switzerland. © Keystone / Alessandro Della Valle

After a record warm September, numerous temperature records fell on Monday. By 5 p.m. on October 2, no fewer than 20 MeteoSwiss stations had recorded new record highs since measurements began.

The Federal Office for Meteorology and Climatology (MeteoSwiss) said on Monday evening that some of the records were decades old. In Buffalora on the Ofen Pass in canton Graubünden – otherwise known as a place of cold records – the temperature climbed to 21.3 degrees, beating the October record set on Sunday by one degree.

The October records from Sunday on the Chasseral (19.9 degrees), Piz Corvatsch (8.1) and Jungfraujoch (6.9) were also only one day old.

The oldest record for an October day fell in Samedan, canton Graubünden, with 21.1 degrees. The previous record dating from October 3, 1962 was 21 degrees. The Weiussfluhjoch recorded 16.7 degrees, significantly more than the previous high of 15.1 degrees on October 11, 1978.

Also decades old was the October record in Fahy, canton Jura, at 27.3 degrees on October 3, 1985, or that at Grimsel Hospiz at 18.5 degrees on October 4 1985. Monday dethroned them with 27.6 and 19.5 degrees respectively.

How we work

This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. You can find them here.