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HEATWAVE

Storm warnings in Italy as heatwave set to break on Monday

More storms were forecast in northern Italy on Monday, while much of the south continued to sizzle in temperatures of around 38 degrees.

Published: 28 August 2023 10:50 CEST
Storm warnings in Italy as heatwave set to break on Monday
People at Lake Maggiore in north-eastern Italy, where water levels are low due to drought. (Photo by MARCO BERTORELLO / AFP)

Italyโ€™s civil protection authority on Monday issued severe weather warnings for many parts of the country as the intense heatwave began to recede.

The highest-level red and amber alert warnings were issued for north-western parts of the country, which had already seen a drop in temperatures over the weekend.

The intense late-August heatwave will be pushed back gradually as a cold front moves down from northern Europe early this week, the civil protection department said.

It warned of rainstorms as temperatures begin to fall across the north and centre of the country, with Rome under a lower-level yellow alert on Monday.

Meanwhile in the south temperatures were set to remain in the high 30s on Monday, with the intense heat and humidity expected to break later on Monday evening or Tuesday.

READ ALSO: Italy records 11 ‘extreme weather events’ per day in 2023

Weather conditions were expected to be calmer along the eastern coast of the country, where few alerts were in place.

A map of the weather warnings issued by the civil protection department illustrated the divide, showing red and amber weather alerts in the northwestern Lombardy region, and amber alerts in Trentino Alto Adige, and parts of Liguria, Tuscany, and Veneto, where storms and heavy rain were forecast.

Northern Lombardy’s Valchiavenna area in particular was on high alert for flood risk, the department said.

A yellow weather alert was in place for parts of Abruzzo, Campania, Emilia Romagna, Friuli Venezia Giulia, Lazio, Molise, Piedmont, Sardinia, Tuscany, and Umbria, where rain and unsettled conditions were expected in the coming days.

While temperatures in the south were forecast to drop by up to seven or eight degrees in the coming days, they were expected to remain in the high 20s or low 30s in many areas.

Authorities were on alert for severe storms and flooding in the north of the country and wildfires in the south after extreme weather during a previous heatwave in July left at least seven people dead.

‘Extreme weather events’ including hailstorms, tornadoes, floods, wildfires and storms have been a common occurrence in Italy this year, killing dozens of people and causing serious damage to farmland and property.

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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.

READ ALSO:

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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