Heavy thunderstorms. Locarno registered record gusts, in the canton of Bern there were hailstones the size of a golf ball.

Heavy thunderstorms swept across Switzerland on Thursday evening. They brought strong squalls and hailstorms. In the Alps, meteorologists expect large amounts of rain in some areas on Friday.

The strongest gust of thunderstorms since measurements began in Locarno TI, hailstones up to five centimeters in size in the canton of Bern and torrential rain in some places: strong thunderstorms swept across Switzerland on Thursday and on Friday night.

The Bernese Oberland, the Mittelland, the Jura, eastern Switzerland and Ticino were affected. There were floods in some places, but nothing was initially known about major damage.

According to the police, a stream burst its banks between Pfäffikon and Freienbach in the canton of Schwyz. The main road between the two places was therefore closed.

hurricane and hail

In Burgdorf BE, a super cell rained down hailstones with a diameter of up to five centimeters, as SRF Meteo announced.

There was hail elsewhere, for example in the cantons of Jura and Basel-Stadt.

Many weather stations recorded strong to stormy gusts.

After midnight, a strong thunderstorm passed over Ticino. The hail cell moving in from the southwest brought a hurricane gust of 129 kilometers per hour on the Cimetta, in Locarno-Monti it was almost 117 km/h. According to MeteoSwiss, it was the strongest gust of thunderstorms there since measurements began.

Large amounts of rain expected in Alps

The most precipitation on Thursday fell in Kiesen BE with 61 millimeters, as reported by MeteoNews. The largest amount of rain within ten minutes also fell in Ticino. In Locarno-Monti it was 21.0 millimeters.

A total of almost 29,000 lightning strikes were registered from Thursday afternoon to Friday morning. Several thousand of them in the canton of Bern alone.

The thunderstorms preceded a cold front that continued to move across Switzerland on Friday and brought a significant cooling in the country. In the Alps, meteorologists expected large amounts of rain in some areas. More severe thunderstorms are possible on Friday, especially on the south side of the Alps, it said.

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