Swiss perspectives in 10 languages

Geneva cancels all Saturday events after severe weather warning

Flooding in Morges, on Lake Geneva, June 2024
The Lake Geneva region has already been hit by severe weather events in recent days, such as in Morges, pictured here. Keystone / Laurent Gillieron

The canton of Geneva is cancelling all permits for events planned at public venues from 2 p.m. on Saturday. This comes after a severe weather warning: a storm is expected in the region from late afternoon.

According to a statement from cantonal authorities, there is a high probability of stormy gusts reaching speeds of up to 100 km/h in Geneva in the afternoon. There may also be large hailstones, lightning strikes and heavy rain showers.

Do you want to read our weekly top stories? Subscribe here.

The cancellation affects, among others, the fan zone at Plainpalais in the city of Geneva, where 15,000 spectators were expected at 6 p.m. for the start of the European Football Championship match between Switzerland and Italy.

MeteoSwiss had already warned on Friday of an “explosive weather cocktail” that would brew late on Saturday afternoon, particularly in western Switzerland: there is a threat of violent thunderstorms that, due to their possible supercell structure, could favour strong gusts of wind and hail.

+ How Switzerland is trying to defeat extreme weather events

According to meteorologists, the arrival of warm and very humid air in Switzerland with temperatures of up to 21 degrees at around 1,500m above sea level, coupled with the daytime warming in the course of the afternoon, will lead to strong instability.

Translated from German by DeepL/gw

This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles.

If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here. If you want to learn more about how we use technology, click here. To offer feedback on this news story, please write to english@swissinfo.ch.

Popular Stories

Most Discussed

News

In compliance with the JTI standards

More: SWI swissinfo.ch certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative

You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!

If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.

SWI swissinfo.ch - a branch of Swiss Broadcasting Corporation SRG SSR

SWI swissinfo.ch - a branch of Swiss Broadcasting Corporation SRG SSR