A violent storm roared through Switzerland on Thursday night with high winds of up to 171 kilometres per hour (km/h) registered in the northeast of the country. A 72-year-old motorist lost his life in canton Bern.
This content was published on
2 minutes
Keystone-SDA
Winds of 171 km/h were registered on the Säntis mountain in the Appenzell Alps in northeast Switzerland. Elsewhere, high winds were recorded in Chasseral, canton Bern, (136 km/h) and Les Diablerets, canton Vaud, (127 km/h).
The high winds of Storm Frederico ranked among the top 10 ever recorded in certain locations in Switzerland, notably in cantons Bern, Lucerne and Zurich, said MeteoSwiss.
Other peaks witnessed strong winds, such as the Uetliberg, canton Zurich (133 km/h), or the Bantiger, canton Bern (152 km/h). The winds were also violent in populated areas in the lowlands: Cressier, canton Neuchâtel, (100 km/h) and Le Bouveret, canton Vaud (98 km/h.)
Canton Bern was badly affected with multiple calls to police, mainly for fallen trees or objects on roads. A 72-year-old motorist died in Gurzelen, canton Bern, on Thursday evening after a tree crushed his car.
Several railway lines were also interrupted due to strong winds, notably between Bern and Solothurn, and between Zurich and Uetliberg.
In canton Zurich, firefighters were called out over 100 times for uprooted trees. Cantons St Gallen, Thurgau, Schaffhausen and Lucerne suffered similar problems. Several local roads were closed in these regions, and certain municipalities in canton Schaffhausen were briefly without electricity.
In French-speaking Switzerland, trees were uprooted in canton Vaud and Neuchâtel, but there was no major damage.
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.
If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to english@swissinfo.ch.
External Content
Your subscription could not be saved. Please try again.
Almost finished… We need to confirm your email address. To complete the subscription process, please click the link in the email we just sent you.
Popular Stories
More
Foreign affairs
Go to war or stay put? Ukrainian men in Switzerland face fresh dilemmas
Should raw milk sales be banned or should consumers decide?
Swiss food regulations do not allow raw milk to be sold for direct consumption. However, a loophole allows 400 raw milk vending machines to do just that.
Swiss ultra-conservative party hands in signatures against Eurovision 2025
This content was published on
The Swiss Federal Democratic Union (EDU) has handed in referendum signatures to seek a vote to prevent the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) from taking place in Basel from May 13 to 17, 2025.
UNRWA funding remains hot topic in Swiss parliament
This content was published on
A Swiss parliamentary committee has postponed a decision on whether Switzerland should stop funding the United Nations Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA.
This content was published on
A hacker attack has paralysed the OneLog connection platform, compromising the ability of people to access many Swiss media titles.
Ex-Swiss rail catering boss handed three year jail term for fraud
This content was published on
Former head of Elvetino, the catering unit of Swiss Federal Railways, has been sentenced to three years' imprisonment for fraud.
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.