Hi All,

I had a search through the forum and found the causes of and diagnosis of a Föhn wind but I don't have the data for yesterday to decipher....so does anyone know if a rare summer Föhn wind was blowing yesterday in the Zürich area (09/08/2009)?

Thanks,

Chris

I don't think there was in Zurich yesterday as usually when there is, it looks as if you could reach out and touch the mountains by the lake.

thanks for the reply....just trying to get to the bottom of some unexplained sickness!

• pregnant
• swine flu
• hayfever
• food poisoning?

Föhn winds weren't my first thought either....

Could it be also attributed to lonliness in Switzerlan, melting of glacier, perhaps drinking spree during street parade or just anything else?

I came down with flu lately starting from minor colds which resulted from weather changes in this summer season. Cannot blame Föhn for everything, at least not this time

yes it could be due to a million other things, I just wanted to know if a Föhn wind was blowing yesterday. Thanks for keeping it alive.

I hear Baba Yaga is back in town....

I don't know but my swiss girlfriend who has lived here all her life did in fact mention the föhn in the last couple of days and we are not so far from Zürich. Maybe...maybe not but completely unprompted by me she did mention it...

Thanks for the replies but I think this informative reply from meteoswiss.ch puts this one to bed! Some concise information here for anyone interested in diagnosing Föhn events.

Received via email:

"I was working on late shift on Sunday 9th August, and I haven't seen Foehn in any part of Switzerland. In the Zurich area, there was slight Bise (NE) flow in the lower part of the atmosphere, while only in the upper levels there were light southwesterlies.

Detection of Foehn winds on ground is not always and not everywhere an easy task. Check out both the temperatures, relative humidities and winds (speed and direction) on our website if you want to diagnose Foehn occurence:

http://www.meteoschweiz.admin.ch/web...r.par0001.html

Characteristics of the typical Foehn air are its warmth and dryness. Temperatures in the alpine valleys frequently exceed surrounding values in flat areas by several degrees Celsius, especiallly in winter and autumn Foehn situations. At the same time the relative humidity is very low, some 20 to 40%, while in non-Foehn areas it's rather 40-60%. Since in the Zurich area Foehn is a rare event and mostly occuring on warm or even hot spring or summer days, the Foehn air does not differ that much from the surrounding non-Foehn air, as in the alpine valleys.

Wind direction is another check, then, to diagnose possibility of Foehn: at weather stations Zurich-Fluntern, Zurich-Kloten and Waedenswil, Foehn is usually a light southerly flow (Waedenswil might have moderate Foehn winds from time to time).

In the more Foehn-prone alpine valleys the wind direction is - of course - more aligned to the main valley axis, which can deviate quite a bit from south.

There were some very interesting Foehn cases recently, some of the have been documented and described in online reports:

http://www.meteoschweiz.admin.ch/web...sterfoehn.html

http://www.meteoschweiz.admin.ch/web..._20081217.html

http://www.meteoschweiz.admin.ch/web...urm_Dez08.html

There is a great deal of literature tackling Foehn winds all around the world, some basic information and starting point for personal research is given in our online lexic:

http://www.meteoschweiz.admin.ch/web...m?query=F%F6hn

Sincerely,"