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Italy braced for more severe weather as Storm Ciarán moves in

Italian authorities issued weather warnings from Venice to Naples on Friday as Storm Ciaran continued to sweep further south.

Published: 2 November 2023 11:16 CET
Updated: 2 November 2023 18:05 CET
Italy braced for more severe weather as Storm Ciarán moves in
(Photo by Marco BERTORELLO / AFP)

Italy’s civil protection authority issued its highest-level red alert for parts of the Friuli Venezia Giulia and Veneto regions on Thursday, November 2nd, warning of heavy rainfall and strong winds in the area.

LATEST: Severe travel disruption, power cuts and 190km/h winds as Storm Ciaran hits France

Storm Ciaran was forecast to arrive in northern Italy after pelting Britain, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands and France, where it killed at least one person.

A moderate-level amber alert was issued for parts of Emilia Romagna, Friuli Venezia Giulia, Liguria, Lombardy, Tuscany, Trentino Alto Adige and Veneto on Thursday.

An update on Thursday evening showed an amber alert was also in place for the city of Naples on Friday as the storm was forecast to move further south into the regions of Lazio, Umbria, Campania and parts of Calabria.

The storm front was expected to bring winds of over 90 kilometres per hour and “increasingly abundant precipitation”, said forecasters from the IlMeteo.it. website.

READ ALSO:  What do Italy’s storm alerts mean?

Naples mayor Gaetano Manfredi ordered schools in the city to close on Friday as a precaution.

Parts of northern Italy have already been battered by storms this week. On Tuesday, Milan’s River Seveso and nearby Lake Como burst their banks, while Venice was protected from an unusually high acqua alta (high tide) by the Mose flood barrier.

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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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