Switzerland hit by heavy summer storms

Storms north of the Alps, gusts of 140 km/h in Neuchâtel Keystone-SDA

Violent thunderstorms hit Switzerland from west to east on Sunday One person was seriously injured and there were several traffic disruptions due to falling trees.

+Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox

The injured man was hit by a fallen branch in canton Bern and was taken to hospital by a helicopter of the Swiss air rescue service Rega.

Falling trees and branches caused traffic disruptions in Biel and throughout the Seeland, a police spokeswoman said.

Wind gusts reached 140 km/h in Neuchâtel and 127 km/h in Grenchen, the meteorological service Meteonews reported on the X social network.

The violence of the storm prompted the organisers of an open-air festival in Neuchâtel to evacuate the event site and cancel concerts. The material damage to the festival infrastructure is considerable.

A severe storm warning was issued for practically the entire northern side of the Alps.

Translated from Italian by DeepL/mga

How we work

We select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools to translate them into English. A journalist then reviews the translation for clarity and accuracy before publication.  

Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. The news stories we select have been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team from news agencies such as Bloomberg or Keystone.

If you have any questions about how we work, write to us at [e-mail].

News