The province of Siracusa registered a temperature of 48.8°C on Wednesday. If confirmed it is a new record for Europe. Lucifer is to blame.
Sicily’s SIAS agency registered a temperature of 48.8°C in the province of Siracusa on Wednesday.
“If the figure is confirmed after the appropriate analysis, it could be the highest value ever registered on the European continent,” said 3bmeteo.com meteorologist Manuel Mazzoleni.
“That would beat the previous record of 48°C taken in Athens on July 10, 1977 and it would even beat the record of 48.5°C recorded at an unofficial station at Catenanuova in August 1999”.
‘Lucifer’ to peak on Friday
The Lucifer heatwave should peak on Friday. Then 15 cities will be on red alert.
A red alert means the heat is a danger to the health of the general population, not just the elderly and the fragile.
The 15 red alert cities are: Bari, Bologna, Bolzano, Brescia, Cagliari, Campobasso and Florence; Frosinone, Latina, Palermo, Perugia, Rieti, Rome, Trieste and Viterbo. Eight of those cities were on red alert on Wednesday.
Forecasts put the temperatures reaching as high as 48° in parts of southern Italy.
Scientists say the climate crisis is causing extreme weather events and heatwaves more frequently and which are more intense.
