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Switzerland hit by more than 70,000 lightning bolts

Lightning
A bolt of lightning over a school in Bern on Tuesday © Keystone / Peter Klaunzer

After a day of record temperatures, powerful thunderstorms passed over Switzerland on Tuesday night, with SRF Meteo reporting more than 70,000 flashes by 5am.

A woman was struck by lightning in Villars-sur-Glâne, western Switzerland, on Tuesday evening and was taken to hospital with serious injuries.

The strongest gale-force winds, of 144 km/h, were measured by MeteoNews on the Uetliberg mountain measuring station outside Zurich.

At Zurich airport, check-ins were paused for an hour on Tuesday for safety reasons. Earlier the temperature in Switzerland exceeded 37°C for the first time this year: in Chur, eastern Switzerland, the mercury hit 37.6°C.

According to MeteoNews, thunderstorms were most frequent around 8pm on Tuesday in Ticino and the Gotthard region, between eastern Lake Geneva and Bern, and over the Jura in the northwestern part of the country.

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