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Tornados, lightning, flash floods: Italy’s extreme weather leaves three dead

Freak storms and flash flooding following last week's heatwave in Italy claimed three lives over the weekend, including a young woman caught up in a mini-tornado near Rome's Fiumicino airport.

Published: 29 July 2019 09:09 CEST
Tornados, lightning, flash floods: Italy's extreme weather leaves three dead
Debris in Focene near Fiumicino, where a woman was killed when a mini-tornado smashed her car into a barrier. Photo: Vincenzo Pinto/AFP

The 26-year-old woman was driving home at around 2:00 am Sunday when the mini-tornado lifted her car and sent it crashing against a railing.

The highly localised winds tore up trees and scattered debris across the zone it hit.


Damage left by the mini-tornado near Rome. Photo: Vincenzo Pinto/AFP

Further north, a 45-year-old Norwegian competing in an ultramarathon in the Dolomite Mountains died after being hit by lightning as he ran at 2,000 metres altitude on Saturday afternoon.

And on Sunday, near Arezzo, south of Florence in the northern Tuscany region, a 70-year-old man died after his car got caught by flash-flooding. The emergency services found his body in a mud-filled canal.

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Coldiretti, Italy's main agricultural organisation, said hail storms over the last 24 hours had caused millions of euros worth of damage across the country. Worst hit was Arezzo province, they said.

Orchards, as well as fields of tobacco, sunflowers and corn were completely destroyed, they said. 

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WEATHER

Norway to get a taste of summer with 20C days this week

Summer is finally here! Or least it is if you live in southern Norway, where a warm front coming up from Europe will bring t-shirt temperatures of 20C by Thursday, according to forecasts.

Published: 30 April 2024 08:42 CEST
Norway to get a taste of summer with 20C days this week

Warm air from southern Europe will combine with a high pressure zone which will bring clear skies and sunshine, with summery weather coming towards the end of the week, Norway’s national weather forecaster Yr has reported. 

“Thursday and Friday especially will be nice,” Ingrid Villa, a meteorologist at the Norwegian Meteorological Institute, told the public broadcaster NRK. “Then we will probably get temperatures of over 20 degrees Celsius in some places.” 

Patches of 20C warmth are expected both in western Norway around Bergen and in Western Norway around Oslo, with the area around Tromsø expected to have slightly cooler weather, although Villa said that “it will absolutely be something like summer there too”. 

The warm sunny weather is, however, expected to pass northern Norway by, with grey overcast skies expected for much of this week. 

But if you think summer has come to Norway to stay, you risk disappointment as much cooler temperatures are expected next week.  

“There’s nothing unusual in getting an early taste of summer in April and the start of May, and then we can quickly go back to cooler more spring-like weather,” Villa said. 

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