Swiss Weather

We will be spending a week in Brig and a week in Lauterbrunnen this August/September hiking the Aletsch Glacier, Saas Fee, Zermatt/Gornergrat and Jungfrau areas.

Our plan is to schedule a morning and an afternoon hike of no more than 3 hours each (most days).

What would be the best source for daily weather reports? Our two concerns are rain storms and sudden changes in temperature. We understand the concept of clothes layering; do we need to layer everyday?

Would a hand held weather station (barometer) be beneficial?

Thank you!!

Hi Jooch,

Good weather websites are Meteo Schweiz and SF Meteo. If you don't have internet available, the TV weather forecast on SF1 might help (around 19:45 after the 19:30 news broadcast). Even if you don't speak German, the maps they show are pretty clear.

Regardless of the predicted weather, I always take along at least one extra layer of water proof clothing in addition to the clothes I actually expect to wear. That can come in handy not only for rain, but for unexpected cold sections of your route as well.

I've used a hand held weather station a couple of times, but that turned out to be quite useless. Air pressure will drop with the altitude. When you go up a mountain, the air pressure drops quicky. The device will interpret that as a fast approaching thunder storm. So it will predict bad weather on most of your trails. I'm not sure if there are devices available which take the altitude into account as well, and do a better job that way.

The tourist office in Lauterbrunnen will have/post a daily weather forecast. Haven't been to Brig so don't know if there's an office there that does the same.