Felix Blumer is not only famous in Glarus as a weatherman of the Landsgemeinde (assembly of the Glarner citizens). The Schwandner is also known nationwide. As a meteorologist of the Swiss radio and television SRF he attracts in each broadcast a million audience in front of the screen.
Blumer was born and raised outside Glarus in Zurich and on April 15, 2013 he was appointed guild master of the guild Wiedikon in Zurich. Funny enough, also the outgoing guild master was a Glarner: Kaspar Luchsinger.
Felix Blumer has remained a Glarner, although his family has been well connected with Zurich for generations. "My grandfather, whose place of origin was Schwanden before the merger of the Glarner villages took place, once said, that he would only become naturalized in Zurich if the town mayor requested it personally." The mayor never did that. "So, I remained to be a Glarner after the merger and my place of origin is still Schwanden respectively Glarus South” said Felix Blumer.
Blumer loves the Kalberwurst (calf sausage), the Läderach chocolate and the Glarner-Pastetli. He once got too much from of the Ziger "for breakfast, for lunch and dinner, that’s too much" says Blumer. "And yet I'm drawn to the Zigerschlitz (nickname for Glarus: Ziger slot) again and again, about four to five times a year."
One of Blumer’s hobbies is - who wonders - in addition to handball, the weather. And his favorite weather? Blumer laughs: "Cloudless at 35 degrees. First because it's nice and hot and second because it's usually easy to predict.”
The now 58-year-old Felix Blumer went to the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich in 1981 as a geography student. In 1987, he spent four months in China for his thesis. In the Republic of Xinjiang, he lived on a glacier at an altitude of 4000 meters. But Blumer also knows the Glarus ice giants: "Especially good the Clardidenfirn." Blumer graduated in 1988 as a graduate scientist ETH. In 1989 he took over the management of the ETH project "The Height Dependence of Precipitation in the Alpine Space". This was followed by a job as a meteorologist and moderator at Meteomedia in Gais/Appenzell. Then Blumer changed the front: in 1995 he became a sports director at the St. Gallen local radio «Aktuell», later he had the opportunity to work as an editor with the tabloid «Blick». From 1997 to spring 2005, Blumer was Information Manager of the National Alarm Center. Since 1 April 2005, he is part of the meteorologist team of SRF Meteo in Switzerland and a very familiar face to almost all Swiss TV watchers.
Felix Blumer was born October 26, 1960 in Winterthur. His parents are Bruno Jean Blumer, born 1931 in Zurich and Gisela Blumer née Weber. Already his grandparents Paul Gustav Blumer, a soap manufacturer, and Maria Magdalena Meyer, as well as his great-grandparents, Samuel Blumer and Maria Ingold, were living in Zurich. Samuel Blumer was born 1855 in Schwanden and emigrated as the first of his family to Zurich.
Free translation from an article published in the Südostschweiz on February 13, 2013.