Almost 400 emergency callouts in the Veneto alone as violent winds and torrential rain follow two weeks of deadly heat. Whilst storms swept much of Italy, Catania and Reggio Calabria remain on red alert.
A wave of storms brought a new kind of extreme-weather trouble to Italy on Thursday, days after the country’s longest-running heatwave in years finally began to break.
Trees felled by violent winds and flooding caused by torrential rain provoked major disruption in many areas, just as the sweltering conditions of the past fortnight were starting to ease.
Almost 400 callouts in the Veneto
The Veneto regional government said its firefighters had responded to almost 400 emergency situations after storms started belting the area on Wednesday. The calls were most involving fallen trees, branches and utility poles, along with flooding that reached into people’s homes. Authorities in Friuli Venezia Giulia reported a similar situation.
Civil protection officials had issued a maximum red alert for hydrogeological risk in parts of northern Veneto, with an orange alert covering other parts of the region and Emilia-Romagna, while a lower yellow warning stretched across a further fourteen regions, from Tuscany and Umbria down to Puglia, Basilicata and Calabria.
Trees were also toppled in the Adriatic city of Ancona, including one that struck a moving car, though no one was injured. Early on Thursday a huge cloudburst hit Naples and the surrounding area, causing widespread flooding.
Heat danger not yet over
While the storms have helped bring down temperatures across much of the country, the health ministry still had two of Italy’s 27 major cities, Catania and Reggio Calabria, on red alert on Thursday because of the continuing dangers posed by the heatwave.
The heat that preceded the storms had been severe and prolonged. At its peak in late June the health ministry had placed 25 cities under its top-level red alert, including Rome, Milan, Florence, Venice, Bologna, Turin, Verona and Genoa, with daytime highs pushing close to 40°C in parts of the country and overnight temperatures in some areas failing to drop below 24-25°C.
Meteorologists warn the relief may only be short. Forecasters have suggested that once the storm front clears, the high-pressure system responsible for the heatwave could reassert itself over the coming days, bringing a renewed rise in temperatures across much of Italy.
