Keystone-SDA
Sometimes heavy snowfall provides a welcome Christmas gift to ski resorts. However, they disrupted road traffic in the Swiss Alps from Sunday morning.
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December 22, 2024 – 4:15 p.m.
(Keystone-ATS) The Uranese cantonal police stopped traffic on Sunday shortly before midday between Amsteg and the Gotthard road tunnel due to heavy snowfall. This is to leave the way clear for snow removal vehicles.
A police spokesperson announced this to the Keystone-ATS news agency, confirming information on the state of road traffic broadcast by TCS on spokesperson.
A traffic jam with a length of up to seven kilometers formed between the Altdorf junction and Göschenen in the canton of Uri. TCS reported delays due to snowfall also on the San Bernardino route.
And the A9 was closed in both directions for road trains and semi-trailers at the Simplon Pass due to snowfall.
A cold front on Sunday
In French-speaking Switzerland, the Lake Geneva basin was covered in gray on Sunday. It is not snow but mainly rain, which fell in abundance, particularly early in the morning.
In several towns on the Plateau, Météo Suisse announces slippery roads, gusts of wind and sometimes snow.
Meteorologists also predicted a lot of wind starting on Sunday. As we could see on Sunday afternoon on the MeteoSwiss website, the wind was blowing at 103.3 km/h on the Jura crest in Chasseral (BE) at 2:00 p.m.
Snow in the mountains
The weather services had announced the arrival of a cold front in Switzerland for Sunday – with snowfall sometimes down to the plains. Until Christmas Eve, meteorologists expect up to 1.25 meters of snow in three days in the center of the Alps.
The Valascia (TI) measuring station of the Institute for the Study of Snow and Avalanches (WSL) indicated 39 centimeters of new snow in the last 24 hours on Sunday midday. There – at around 2,300 meters above sea level – the snow depth already reached 84 centimeters. This measuring station is located above Airolo in Leventina, in the Gotthard region.
On its natural hazards portal, the Confederation warned of considerable dangers due to snow in large parts of the Alps, for example on the roads between Sunday and Tuesday, and of an avalanche danger of degree 3.
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