{"id":2788,"date":"2015-05-21T10:52:46","date_gmt":"2015-05-21T08:52:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/risk\/?p=2788"},"modified":"2023-12-06T11:03:47","modified_gmt":"2023-12-06T10:03:47","slug":"bad-weather-in-western-switzerland-may-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/risk\/bad-weather-in-western-switzerland-may-2015\/","title":{"rendered":"Bad weather in Western Switzerland, May 2015"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bad weather caused damages and evacuations in Western Switzerland in early May due to floods, debris flow and landlsides.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Strong precipitations occurred on Western Switzerland in the beginning of May 2015, especially on May 1st. \u00a0Over 100 mm of rain fell in about\u00a024 hours in some places in Western Switzerland, with a maximum\u00a0of 130 mm at\u00a0La D\u00f4le, Canton of Vaud. Those heavy rains caused different damages as\u00a0debris flow, floods and landslides.<\/p>\n

Several roads and railway have been closed, preventively or due to tracks obstructions in the Alps, the Jura mountains and in the Swiss Plateau. Two landslides have disrupted two main railway tracks, causing high traffic disturbances\u00a0due to deviations and affecting the railway traffic during more than one week.<\/p>\n

In the village of St-Gingolph in the Canton of Valais, the Morge river -which is the border between Switzerland and France along the lake L\u00e9man- overflowed two restaurants with debris flows. Their groundfloor levels have been totally destroyed.<\/p>\n

In the town of Monthey, Canton of Valais, about 300 residents along\u00a0the Vi\u00e8ge river have been evacuated during the\u00a0night because of the high risk of floods.<\/p>\n

The Arve river -which flows through the Chamonix Valley in the French Alps- has reached a flow rate record with 903 m3\/s compared to its\u00a0standard flow of 77 m3\/s at its mouth into the Rh\u00f4ne river in Geneva on 2nd May. Several bridges in the town had to be closed, affecting the urban traffic of the second biggest town of Switzerland.<\/p>\n

North-east of the Western Switzerland, the lakes of Neuch\u00e2tel (Canton of Neuch\u00e2tel), Biel (Canton of Bern) and Morat (Canton of Fribourg), overflowed because of the high flow rate of the Aare river. The maximum height of water level has been reached about 8 days after the first heavy rain with a water level increase of 1 meter. A lot of wood has been carried by the rivers to the shores of the lakes.<\/p>\n

The damages are only material, no injuries were identified. Financial and temporal damages consequences are high for the two destroyed restaurants. The return to normality for river flows and water levels of the lakes took several weeks.<\/p>\n

Sources: Federal Office for the Environment<\/a>, Tribune de Gen\u00e8ve<\/a>, \u00a0Le Temps<\/a><\/p>\n

Images sources: J. Voumard – Risk Group<\/p>\n

\"Grande_Eau_River\"<\/a> \"Wood_on_Lake_Leman\"<\/a> \"St-Gingolph_Restaurants\"<\/a> \"St-Gingolph\"<\/a> \"Restaurant_in_St-Gingolph\"<\/a> \"Morge_River_in_St-Gingoph\"<\/a> \"Media_in_Lutry\"<\/a> \"Landslide_Flamatt\"<\/a> \"Lake-of-Neuchatel\"<\/a>\u00a0\"Island_Lake-of-Neuchatel\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bad weather caused damages and evacuations in Western Switzerland in early May due to floods, debris flow and landlsides. Strong precipitations occurred on Western Switzerland in the beginning of May … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1341,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,75131],"tags":[75200],"class_list":{"0":"post-2788","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-blog","7":"category-hazard-news","8":"tag-hazard-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/risk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/risk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/risk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/risk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1341"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/risk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2788"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/risk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2788\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6100,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/risk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2788\/revisions\/6100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/risk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/risk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/risk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}