Thunderstorms 200 liters of rain per square meter fall in the upper Maggia Valley

The thunderstorms since midday on Saturday have brought record amounts of rain to the southern Valais Alps, the Simplon region and as far as the Leventina.

As the Meteonews precipitation radar shows, around 200 liters of rain per square metre have fallen in the upper Maggia Valley over the past 24 hours. That is even more than the devastating storm in Misox GR last weekend. There it was 120 liters of rain per square meter.

The devastating thunderstorms on Saturday were triggered by a small low over France, as Meteonews wrote in a statement on Sunday. This deepened during the day, causing the first thunderstorm to hit the greater Geneva area at 16:30. In the course of the evening, further thunderstorms moved from France towards Switzerland.

13,000 lightning discharges

From 9 p.m., the thunderstorm cells covered the Geneva area and moved further east, into Valais and finally into Ticino. The thunderstorms produced an unusually high number of lightning strikes. By midnight on Saturday, there were around 10,000 lightning discharges, 4600 of which hit Valais and around 1900 the canton of Ticino.

After midnight, another 2800 lightning discharges occurred. The majority of these affected Ticino and the canton of Graubünden. In total, Meteonews registered around 13,000 lightning strikes in Switzerland. In addition, there were some violent squalls. The strongest winds were measured on Corvatsch (123 km/h) and Gornergrat (122 km/h).

More thunderstorms are forecast along the Alps today (Sunday), but the weather should calm down towards the evening.