Switzerland on Friday, Disrupting Rail Service and Prompting Hundreds of Damage Reports

The Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) said the line between Biel and Olten was interrupted and is currently not passable due to the weather. The weather service SRF Meteo counted around 46,000 lightning strikes within a short period and reported two geographic bands of heavy hail precipitation stretching from the Basel region and Lake Neuchâtel eastward toward Lake Constance. Locally, hailstones reached diameters of up to six centimeters, a size that is relatively rare in Switzerland.

In the canton of Schaffhausen, wind gusts of up to 142 kilometers per hour were measured. The canton of Solothurn was particularly hard hit. A spokesperson for the Solothurn cantonal police told the Swiss news agency Keystone-SDA that the thunderstorm had struck the canton quite violently, with well over 200 damage reports received by mid-morning.

There were no indications of injuries. In Aarau, parts of a gymnasium roof were torn off. The storm front moved eastward toward Zurich and Schaffhausen later in the morning.