After the heat, the Switzerland is now faced with heavy rains which caused floods and mudslides, while the snows were already making their reappearance.

Today, Monday, it snowed in the well-known winter resort of Zermatt, at an altitude of 1,638 meters. “The temperature took an impressive plunge, within four days. On Thursday, the station’s thermometer read 31.2 °C. Today at 11.15 it was 0.5 °C,” the weather service MétéoSuisse reported on the X platform (formerly Twitter).

Many mountain passes of the Alps, such as those of the Gotthard and the Zimblon, remained closed today, due to the rain that started on Friday evening and caused torrents of mud. Train services were canceled in some areas due to landslides.

The Rhine river has overflowed in the valley it flows through in Switzerland, but so far there is no danger to residential areas, as the Swiss news agency Keystone-ATS reported.

Heavy rains also occur in the Italian-speaking areas of Switzerland, especially in the canton of Ticino. The rain will continue tomorrow, according to the weather service. It will snow again in the mountains, but this is not enough to save the Swiss glaciers.

Switzerland and its ecosystem are particularly affected by climate change. The situation in the glaciers is described as dramatic: between 2021-2022 they lost 6% of their volume.