Hello - can anyone tell me if the infamous 'fohn' has started blowing yet? I've been suffering from inexplicable dizziness and general weariness since last week and just want to rule it out. My mother just thinks I'm suffering from malnutrition (Swiss meat being so expensive)...

I live halfway up a mountain in canton Vaud if this helps.

I'm not looking for a proper medical diagnosis,just want to know if it's that time of the year....thanks.

the Foehn is oh-so-last-week. Given that something delivered the snow rapido from up-north, something's a-blowing

!!!! Strange!!!! May I ask....how do you know? The Swiss Weatherman?

no, Wikipedia!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foehn

Normally the 'Föhn' brings and keeps the warm winds...so that's pretty much the gauge the 'Föhn' is present...

The Swiss will tell you that they can 'feel snow coming' - so that might be the cause of your headaches.

We've not had a good foehn with space-ship clouds for a long time. I have know 20° in February in Zurich with it blowing...

The Föhn is a pressure gradient wind just like any other. Föhn is a south wind that occurs when there is bad weather on the south side of the alps and good weather on the north side. On Föhn days the weather will be uncharacteristically warm in the Föhn valleys and the sky will be very clear and sunny.

A similar phenomenon exists when there is bad weather on the north side of the Alps and good weather on the south side, this is then called Nord Föhn. If you look at Meteo or 20 min and see good weather on one side and bad weather on the other side of the Alps then chances are that there will be Föhn, The side that gets the effect of the Föhn is the side with the good weather.

Incidently the same thing happens in the Rockys and other Mountainous areas, In the states the call it Chinook instead of Föhn.

http://www.meteonews.ch/index.php?se...er_mch&lang=en

If you use the above link and there is a pressure difference of more then 10hPa between somewhere north of the Alps and Somewhere South of the Alps then expect those headaches.

Meteoschweiz has not said anything about it, but hypothetically I think you could call the wind we had during the past two days "Bise" -- the wind from the north that makes it cold.

Yea the cold north to north east wind is Bise, But that is coming into effect today. Sunday we had quite strong South West winds across the flatland area of Switzerland and Bodensee. I think it has been about 2 weeks or so since we had any Föhn.

If it's not 'la bise' then it can also be a wind called JORAN,this is a so called mountain-to-valley wind and is prominent in the north-west/west part of Switzerland , particularly south of the Jura mountains,it's a very fierce and cold wind and all the windsurfers on the lakes of Bienne and Neuchâtel love it
and as far as i know apart from making us shiver,that wind has none of the powers over our health as the 'foehn' does.

I think Bise and Joran are one and the same... I'm actually one of those windsurfers who follows these winds around!!!.... Bise is any North to North east wind that originates from a pressure system to the north west of Switzerland... And yea Bise is f*@king freezing... remember being out once in it where the temperature dropped 20 degrees from one day to the next!!! brrrrrrr.

nope they are not the same i think 'anal' is my third name that's why I'll point it out he he he

look here ( I hope you have an inkling of german)

http://www.top-wetter.de/lexikon/j/joran.htm
http://www.top-wetter.de/lexikon/b/bise.htm

Ok.. Ok... I stand corrected!!!... But I can't see too many windsurfers getting excited about Joran!!! Cold front winds are notoriously gusty and do not stick around for very long!!!

Actually I just noticed that this post about Föhn is in the complaints corner!!! My only complaint about it is... that there is not enough of it!!!!

Bring on more Föhn!!!

The people that I know in Switzerland and Baden-Württemberg tend to complain about headaches and all sorts of other pains when the wind direction changes or when the wind is stronger than normal (why do the Germans call a breeze "Sturm" -- it sounds like "storm" to English-speaking ears). I would guess that this is why it is in the complaints corner -- an expat picked up on the Germanic groans.

I wouldn't mind a bit of Föhn and a return to the 15-18 C temperatures right about now...

Your word in the weather gods ( not forecasters) ears!

No not true; at lake Neuchatel this wind comes at around 12pm-1pm and hangs around until at least 6pm and if it is there, it is very strong, Beaufort to 7...

Can anyone tell me whether Genevans call the cold north-east wind La Bise? I'm putting in my novel so I want to get it right! I've felt it blowing across the CERN site but never heard a real Genevan name it.

Yep, that's the name. There's no Genevan name for it.

Thanks a lot!