Random Discussion

where I am it’s been lovely weather today   I’m also in England  

Alright let me leave this here (written rather freestyle so possible mess - but hopefully understandable):

Over the last days and weeks (I don't remember since when) Switzerland has experienced heavy rains. It mostly affected Central Switzerland and the Swiss plateau. Many rivers and lakes are at high tide already! Lake Thun, Lake Biel and Lake Lucerne (hope these are the right names in English?) have been set to risk level 5 / 5 (with many others just below high tide). The same counts for the rivers in Basel, Bern and Zurich (only a selection). According to the weather report it's raining right now in both Lucerne and Bern. In the news earlier this evening they said to expect in certain areas (including both cities ...) approximately 1 more meter (or however it's called in English). Also on Saturday I believe, they said that in many places there's been more rain in 1 day than in a usual month of July. As a consequence of the heavy rains, boats aren't running anymore and highways have been shut in order to make room for the rivers running alongside them ...

On top of that Zurich has been hit by a very heavy thunderstorm on Tuesday night. During that time in some parts of the city and villages around the canton there's been an impressive rainfall of 31 mm within 10 minutes! As well as 1'000+ notifications of damages during 1 hour ...

Needless to say that the insurance loss so far is already in the hundreds of millions.

However for everyone concerned: Here in North Eastern Switzerland where I both live and work we have obviously been affected as well, but not as hard as in other parts of the country. However yesterday someone at work said that "our" Lake Constance is only like 50 centimeters below high tide - and last week it once rose by 23 centimeters within 24 hours. 


We've seen some impressive (and frightening) photographs over the last days. Here's a selection from various places. They might be called different in English though.

Thun
A lido outside the city of Biel.
Basel
From a random village at Lake Lucerne
Bern

(Let me post this here since we haven't a thread regarding the Olympic games.)


Uhm ... I just read that Swiss tennis player Belinda Bencic just qualified for 2 finals within just a few hours. Is she okay?

On a side note: With that our athletes have now secured their 8th medal and therefore already excelled the goal of 7 medals. I even read that Tokyo could end up as the most successful Olympics for Switzerland in almost 70 years.