The weather Snow affects road traffic in the Alps
Heavy snowfall in places caused disruption to road traffic in the Swiss Alps from Sunday morning. In front of the north portal of the Gotthard tunnel, the police had to stop traffic for a while to clear the snow from the highway.
22.12.2024, 12:39
22.12.2024, 14:25
SDA
This was announced by a media spokesperson for the cantonal police of Uri to the Keystone-SDA news agency on request. He confirmed a road traffic status report from the Touring Club of Switzerland (TCS) on the short message service X.
As a result, there was a traffic jam between the Altdorf and Göschenen junctions with a length of up to seven kilometers. The TCS also reported an obstruction due to snowfall on the San Bernardino route. And the A 9 was closed in both directions for trailer trucks and articulated lorries on the Simplon Pass due to snowfall.
The weather services had announced the arrival of a cold front in Switzerland on Sunday - with snowfall in some places down to the lowlands and valleys. By Christmas Eve, meteorologists expected up to 125 centimetres of snow in central areas of the Alps within 75 hours.
The Vallascia measuring station of the Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research (WSL) recorded 39 centimetres of fresh snow in the last 24 hours at midday on Sunday. There - at an altitude of around 2300 meters - the snow depth was already 84 centimeters. This measuring station is located above Airolo IT in the Gotthard region.
On its natural hazards portal, the federal government warned of considerable dangers from snow in large parts of the Alps, for example on roads between Sunday and Tuesday, and of a level 3 avalanche risk.
Meteorologists were also expecting a lot of wind from Sunday. As can be seen on the MeteoSwiss website on Sunday afternoon, at 2 p.m. on the Chasseral BE, the wind swept over the top of the Jura at 103.3 kilometers per hour.
