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WEATHER

‘Winter is starting’: Italy braces for snow and storms as cold snap arrives

Northern Italy woke to freezing temperatures on Friday while Vesuvius was dusted with snow as long-delayed winter weather arrived in Italy.

Published: 20 January 2023 10:09 CET
‘Winter is starting’: Italy braces for snow and storms as cold snap arrives
Turin's Parco del Valentino. Snow fell in Turin, Milan and other northern Italian cities overnight on Thursday. (Photo by MARCO BERTORELLO / AFP)

A cold front arriving from northern Europe brought temperatures as low as minus 18 degrees Celsius in the eastern Alps in the early hours of Friday, while minus 14 was recorded in Garfagnana, and minus 5 in Milan, Turin and inland Sicily.

Snow also fell at higher altitudes in the south overnight, with local residents capturing images of Vesuvius covered in a dusting of snow.

“Winter is starting,” Claudio Cassardo, climatologist at the University of Turin, told newspaper La Repubblica on Friday.

“We will return to normal seasonal temperatures. However, we’re no longer used to the cold and snow”.

While the north in particular shivers in freezing temperatures and snow was forecast for many areas, including at lower altitudes, central and southern regions were warned to expect heavy rain and stormy conditions from Friday and into the weekend.

Italy’s Department for Civil Protection issued a lower-level alert for storms on Friday in parts of five southern Italian regions, including Basilicata and Calabria, and a medium-level amber alert for Campania, where the agency warned of a risk of hailstones and flash floods.

Showers, strong winds and thunderstorms are expected to spread further across the centre-south and to the Adriatic coast by Saturday, when temperatures are again forecast to drop below zero in inland parts of the centre and north.

Weather website Meteo3B predicted temperatures would drop to 0-1 C across much of the north overnight and in the early morning on Saturday.

Forecasts showed the mildest temperatures in the coming days would be in the southeastern region of Puglia and along the southern coasts of Sicily and Calabria, where a steady 8-10 degrees Celsius is expected over the weekend.

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WEATHER

IN PICTURES: ‘Exceptional’ Sahara dust cloud hits Europe

An "exceptional" dust cloud from the Sahara is choking parts of Europe, the continent's climate monitor said on Monday, causing poor air quality and coating windows and cars in grime.

Published: 8 April 2024 14:15 CEST
IN PICTURES: 'Exceptional' Sahara dust cloud hits Europe

Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service said the latest plume, the third of its kind in recent weeks, was bringing hazy conditions to southern Europe and would sweep northward as far as Scandinavia.

Mark Parrington, senior scientist at Copernicus, said the latest event was related to a weather pattern that has brought warmer weather to parts of Europe in recent days.

“While it is not unusual for Saharan dust plumes to reach Europe, there has been an increase in the intensity and frequency of such episodes in recent years, which could be potentially attributed to changes in atmospheric circulation patterns,” he said.

This latest episode has caused air quality to deteriorate in several countries, Copernicus said.

The European Union’s safe threshold for concentrations of PM10 — coarser particles like sand and dust that that can irritate the nose and throat — has already been exceeded in some locations.

A picture taken on April 8, 2024 shows a rapeseed field under thick sand dust blown in from the Sahara, giving the sky a yellowish appearance near Daillens, western Switzerland. – An “exceptional” dust cloud from the Sahara is choking parts of Europe, the continent’s climate monitor said, causing poor air quality and coating windows and cars in grime. (Photo by Fabrice COFFRINI / AFP)

The worst affected was the Iberian Peninsula in Spain but lesser air pollution spikes were also recorded in parts of Switzerland, France and Germany.

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Local authorities in southeastern and southern France announced that the air pollution threshold was breached on Saturday.

They advised residents to avoid intense physical activity, particularly those with heart or respiratory problems.

The dust outbreak was expected to reach Sweden, Finland and northwest Russia before ending on Tuesday with a shift in weather patterns, Copernicus said.

The Sahara emits between 60 and 200 million tonnes of fine dust every year, which can travel thousands of kilometres (miles), carried by winds and certain meteorological conditions.

The Spanish Canary Islands off the coast of northwest Africa saw just 12 days within a 90-day period from December to February where skies were free of Saharan dust, the local weather agency Aemet had reported.

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