{"id":111503,"date":"2026-08-04T08:05:39","date_gmt":"2026-08-04T08:05:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/111503\/"},"modified":"2026-08-04T08:05:39","modified_gmt":"2026-08-04T08:05:39","slug":"swiss-lake-loses-tourists-as-drought-causes-water-levels-to-drop-22cm-a-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/111503\/","title":{"rendered":"Swiss lake loses tourists as drought causes water levels to drop 22cm a day"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Repeated heatwaves and prolonged droughts across Europe are reshaping tourism, especially when it comes to boat tourism and watery beauty spots. Travel Tomorrow has already reported on low river levels and their impact on <a href=\"https:\/\/traveltomorrow.com\/low-danube-water-levels-strand-cruise-ships-and-hit-hungarys-tourism\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Danube<\/a> cruises, and now low levels in the River Doubs in eastern France and Switzerland have also left boats stranded on Jura\u2019s Lake Brenets\u2014usually a picturesque destination on the French-Swiss border.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The liminal body of water is 200 metres north of Lac du Joux, which is fed by different rivers and is the largest lake above 1000 metres altitude in Switzerland. In contrast with that, Brenets (also called Lac de Chaillexon in French) is described on a local tourism website as a \u201clittle gem,\u201d its perimeter walkable in an hour. It\u2019s also known for the natural ice formed and exported from there in winter.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At the start of the main 2026 season in April, social media posts from the Jura3lacs account showed leisure boats bobbing on clear and tranquil waters against a backdrop of forested, limestone outcrops, and a 27-metre waterfall that has around 17,000 Instagram tags.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But, despite the growing popularity of Switzerland as a \u201ccoolcation\u201d spot, this year\u2019s spring temperatures(March\u2013May) averaged 1.6\u00b0C above the long-term average, ranking as the third-warmest spring since records began in 1864. May was 1.8\u00b0C above average. June was 3.5\u00b0C above the 1991\u20132020 norm, and July was the warmest on record, at 3.2\u00b0C above the reference period, according to SwissInfo.ch<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A mountain lake in high heat sounds idyllic, but the heat and drought mean the lake has currently lost its charm for visitors and is largely \u2060deserted, due to rainfall since April at about half the usual rate, according to M\u00e9teo Suisse, and catastrophic water levels in the River Doubs.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Instead of its usual 1.5-km length and 500-metre width, the lake has shrunk. Boats now sit on the lake\u2019s exposed brown silt bed, taunted by a meagre stream of muddy water in the lake\u2019s middle\u2014now more than nine metres below the average level. Worse, the situation is deteriorating by around 22 centimetres every day, with drought conditions predicted to last through mid-August.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">One vessel stranded on the lake is \u201cJumbo,\u201d owned by Yvan Durig\u2019s Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 de Navigation des Brenets, who reports being hit hard and feeling \u201cpowerless\u201d to improve his lot. Regional data notes that, together, three local boat companies usually ferry thousands of tourists across the lake in the summer season.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As countries like Switzerland pivot away from snow sports and promote their year-round tourism offer amid growing concerns about snowfall, recent drought conditions and their impact on summer tourism activities are likely to contribute to the ongoing conversation about tourism and climate adaptation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Repeated heatwaves and prolonged droughts across Europe are reshaping tourism, especially when it comes to boat tourism and&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":111504,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[5581,15855,46027,54555,5680,41,17,54556],"class_list":["post-111503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-switzerland","tag-climate","tag-drought","tag-heatwave","tag-lac-des-brenets","tag-lake","tag-swiss","tag-switzerland","tag-water-level"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/117036208971681332","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111503"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111503\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}