Two forest fires, 80 police calls in less than 24 hours in Valais
No doubt about it, the wind was blowing hard in Valais Sunday morning
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – The Tour de Romandie racers face a tough challenge Sunday 29 April as they pump up the steep mountainside from Mollens to Aminona, after a descent from Crans-Montana, 16.5km with strong foehn winds gusting for their final day of the race, against the clock.
Valais police say that between noon Saturday and 09:00 Sunday they had 80 calls due to wind, mainly trees down and electric lines hit.
Two forest fires were started by falling trees hitting electric lines; one Saturday afternooon in Mieville, which was quickly contained, touched 1,000m2 and a second, between Gietroz and Finhaut at 05:00, covered 5,000m2. There were no injuries and no homes reached by the fires.
Meteoswiss said Sunday morning that the past five days have seen three peaks in the foehn, with the strongest Saturday afternoon between Le Bouveret and Martigny, when it reached 100kph.
The warm, dry southwest wind stretched further than normal – it is usually an Alpine valley wind – reaching Geneva airport and at times Schaffhausen.
Temperatures also reached record highs for April, with Sion and Sierre registering 30C Saturday afternoon.
Geneva, "crowning glory", trees in winter (photo ©2011 Rohit Acharya, (http://flickr.com/rhohit)
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The winter face of Geneva is showing, and if that brings to mind only gray skies, try looking up at the trees.
Photographer Rohit Acharya has put together an album of Geneva’s trees in winters, showing another face of the city’s beauty, in “Life after death”.
The mix in Swiss forests will likely look different thanks to climate extremes
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Mathematicians at EPFL, the Lausanne-based Polytechnic Institute, are giving forest guardians a helping hand in better understanding what is happening to the tree population.
Half of the Scots pines in the Viège/Visp forest in canton Valais, for example, have died in the past 20 years, and mathematical models have made it clear that the culprit is not so much higher temperatures, as climate extremes. “It’s now acknowledged that it’s extreme climate situations that actually modify vegetation,” EPFL notes in a press release.
The university’s chair of statistics at EPFL, Jacques Ferrez, who is also with the Swiss Federal Research Institute, will soon publish a study of 14 forests, with 10 years of data.
“During the last 10 years, thermometers have been placed simultaneously in the forest and on the outside. We select the extreme daily temperatures, and among this data we only track unusual events.,” explains Ferrez. “You could say that we go by the maximums of maximums and the minimums of minimums.”
Swiss can say bye-bye Scots pines, hello palm trees
Autumn colours near Lussy, canton Vaud, farmers's fields
Classic cars in Morges, October 2010
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The latest additions to the GenevaLunch photos albums are autumn colours near Morges, canton Vaud, in the fields and forests around the village of Lussy, by editor Ellen Wallace, and, from Mr Kio on flickr, an additional 14 spectacular photos of the classic cars meet-up in Morges in October that pulled in thousands of fans of beautiful automobiles, bringing to 61 the number of images from the event (Jared Bloch is the photographer of the first batch).
GenevaLunch now has 91 photo albums with images by some 20 photographers that show many views of life in the Lake Geneva region.
Ruth Dreifuss, former Swiss president, who grew up in the Secheron district in Geneva, attended a December 2008 presentation on the development of the international Geneva project, near the WTO.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The proposed extension to the World Trade Organization’s building at Centre William Rappard will be decided this Sunday 27 September by the city of Geneva’s voters. The vote is a strictly municipal affair, and the outcome is not binding on the canton, which has the final say on city planning decisions. But this vote is being seen as a test of the city’s commitment to the concept of Genève internationale, host to the European headquarters of the UN and to more than 30 specialized UN organizations, as well as to a large number of non-governemental organizations (NGOs).
A strong “no” vote by the citizens of Geneva would seriously weaken that commitment. Pierre Vanek, leader of the project’s opponents, points out in an interview published in Le Temps that the canton can ignore the result of a refusal, but “people wouldn’t understand why it was going against a popular vote.”
The cantonal authorities approved the building extension because the WTO urgently needs the extra space.
Wittfoht architects' sketch for WTO extension
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The World Trade Organization (WTO) is to have an improved and larger home in its present location, and pedestrians who like to stroll along the lakefront, or fans of the nearby William Rappard Park need not fear: the lakefront will remain open and none of the magnificent old trees will be cut down. Plans for the extension were unveiled officially Monday March 23 by the city, canton and federal government, who are all participating in the CHF130 million project.
Swis Jura, winter 2009, with heavy snow (photo: Shirley Curran)
Jura, Switzerland (24 heures, Fre)- Extreme weather over the course of winter caused 600-1,000 trees to fall along the base of the Jura mountains. Local loggers and forest services are closing off the dangerous areas and evacuating fallen trees to ensure that train lines are not at risk.
The Vaud forest service compares the damage to that of Lothar, the 1999 storm that swept across central Europe.
