Weather: 2023: The summer of all extremes that made Yoyo

According to meteorologists, summer ended on August 31. It’s time to take stock of the MeteoNews agency, which first gave us the astonishingly accurate figure of “362,256 lightning bolts lit up the Swiss sky.” That’s 100,000 more than in 2022. The summer of 2023 marked “wild weather changes.” The defining event remains drama La Chaux-de-FondsThe sky fell on the heads of its inhabitants on July 24.

A tornado that lasted a few minutes blew through the narrow streets of the clock city. A person in a car was crushed to death when a crane fell in the 217 kmph tornado. 4000 to 5000 buildings were affected A bill is estimated at 90 million francs. The damage to the forest was great and the city had to be replanted 1500 trees.

Fifth hottest summer

But it is apparently the evolution of temperature that attracts the attention of rain and fair weather experts. The summer of 2023 did not break average records. It ranks as the fifth warmest summer since the 1990s, after 2003, 2022, 2015 and 2019.

August, the scorching month: “Nationwide, summers were 1.7 degrees warmer than the new climate standard from 1991 to 2020”. In detail, June was 2.6 degrees warmer than average, although it did not experience temperatures of 30 degrees or more. The first heat wave occurred between July 9 and July 11 with a maximum of 37.6 degrees in Sur.

39.3 degrees in Geneva

After the hottest days since August, the weather changed drastically for a week: “On August 6 and 7, maximum temperatures were generally below 20 degrees and the snowfall limit temporarily dropped to 2000 meters,” recalls MeteoNews. But this summer “Yoyo” didn’t say its last word. “From August 12, a significant heat wave moved in the west. She was exceptional in many ways.” On the one hand, Geneva has had 15 consecutive hot days of late and very long. At the end of the lake, it recorded 39.3 degrees last August 24. But that did not break the absolute record set on July 7, 2015 with 39.7 degrees.

Another record has been reported August 20 to 21 night. The radiosonde launched from Payerne recorded a zero-degree range of 5298 meters, breaking the record of 114 meters in summer 2022. From August 26 onwards the weather changed dramatically again and the temperature dropped above 20 to 25 degrees on some days. Heavy rains continued until August 29, causing significant damage in Ticino.

“From one extreme to another”

In terms of drought, the Swiss territory presents very different situations: “All over the country, the summer of 2023 was actually a bit drier, mainly due to June,” notes MeteoNews. However, there is a strong difference between West, East and South. Local rainfall was above average. This average partially masks the real problem: this summer, we went from one extreme to the other! MeteoNews ends.

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