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WEATHER

Italy set for sunny Christmas with temperatures reaching 25C

Italy is expecting a second Christmas marked by unusually mild weather, with temperatures around 8°C above average for this time of year, forecasters said.

Italy set for sunny Christmas with temperatures reaching 25C
Snow is unusual at Christmas in Italy, but this year the weather is once again likely to be warm enough for outdoor dining in many parts of the country. (Photo by FILIPPO MONTEFORTE / AFP)

From the end of this week a spell of warm weather will arrive bringing temperatures of around 20-22 degrees Celsius in many parts of the country, said forecasters from the IlMeteo weather website on Tuesday.

“Something very strange will happen from Christmas Eve and then also on Christmas and Boxing Day,” wrote meteorologist Mattia Gussoni.

An unusually warm spell is set to last around ten days, bringing sunny conditions to many regions, he said.

Temperatures are expected to be highest most along the Adriatic coast, across the south and on the major islands, with temperatures of up to 25C forecast in Sicily.

Temperatures in these areas will “​​certainly be more typical of the months of April and May than the end of December,” Gussni said.

The warmer-than-average temperatures were caused by an anticyclone moving in from northern Africa, he explained.

An image showing the anticyclone’s position over Italy during the Christmas weekend. Source: IlMeteo

He said most northern areas could expect temperatures of “a few degrees less, but still around 8 to 12°C” over Christmas.

Areas around the Po Valley and Tyrrhenian coast will see overcast skies and scattered showers, forecasters said.

Rain and cloudy conditions are expected in northern regions on Wednesday, including in parts of Lombardy, Emilia Romagna and Tuscany, before the warmer weather moves in at the end of the week.

A white Christmas is a rare event in Italy, with snowfall recorded at one Christmas out of ten on average since 1980.

But such warm temperatures at Christmas for two years running mark a “significant climatic anomaly, a sign of climate change underway, affecting practically all of Europe,” Gussoni said.

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WEATHER

Mystery sonic boom rattles Italy’s Elba island

An unidentified sonic boom heard on the Italian island of Elba and in Corsica on Thursday may have been a meteorite, experts have said.

Mystery sonic boom rattles Italy’s Elba island

The town of Campo nell’Elba, on the Italian tourist island of Elba, 10 kilometres off Tuscany’s coast, said on its Facebook page that a nearby tracking station had “captured a seismic, acoustic event felt by everyone” at 4:30pm.

Corsican media reports said it was also felt on the island.

Tuscany’s president Eugenio Giani initially said it was an earthquake, before backtracking after Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV) ruled it out.

The Italian Air Force told Giani it had nothing to do with the sonic boom.

“The type of event which caused the tremor, felt by many as an earthquake over the entire coast of Tuscany and in some inland areas, is currently unconfirmed,” Giani wrote on social media.

The region’s Geophysics Institute and the University of Florence said in a joint statement that whatever caused the boom was travelling at 400 miles per second.

“A meteorite entering the atmosphere seems the most likely and in line with the data registered”.

The Corriere della Sera daily quoted an unnamed person from Italy’s civil protection agency saying “the impact would have been registered by seismographs. The most likely hypothesis is still an airplane”.

It is not the first time mysterious sonic booms have been registered on Elba, the Corriere della Sera said. Similar events in 2012, 2016 and 2023 have yet to be explained, it said.

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