End of July with bad weather: wind and thunderstorms arrive, in the south temperatures drop by 10-15 degrees

A summer exodus weekend marked by heavy rain, thunderstorms, lightning, local hailstorms and strong wind gusts in the Centre North, with seven regions on yellow alert: Veneto, Emilia-Romagna and sectors of Friuli Venezia Giulia, Lombardy, Liguria, Marche and Umbria. In the South, temperatures will drop by as much as 10-15 degrees. A strengthening of the Mistral winds is forecast for the next few days, which will mainly touch Sardinia.

The bad weather in the north has already made its effects felt, especially in the Pordenone area with 100 calls for assistance, particularly for fallen trees in the vicinity of power lines and roofs blown off by the wind. In Veneto, the Trevigianese area was hit, where the Soligo river flooded in Pieve di Soligo on Thursday evening, while railway traffic between Conegliano and Pordenone was interrupted due to a tree that had fallen onto the tracks. And after the weekend of instability, but with sunshine in the South, an intense wave of bad weather is expected in the Centre-North. Counted hours, then, for the strong heat due to a cyclone arriving in these hours from Northern Europe laden with thunderstorms and strong winds that will change the weather this weekend.

"In the last few days we have experienced one of the hottest phases of this first part of summer with temperatures over 44°C, particularly over Sicily, a hot and humid atmosphere can be considered as an ideal "fuel" to trigger particularly violent thunderstorm phenomena," explains Mattia Gussoni, meteorologist at iLMeteo.it. The collision between this air and the cyclone from Northern Europe "will trigger thunderstorm cells capable of causing rainfall even in the form of cloudbursts, especially in the Centre-North," adds the expert. Conditions will remain unstable on Saturday "with the possibility of local hailstorms in particular on the Alps and Pre-Alps and nearby plains in the North East; downpours, albeit more localised, will also affect Emilia Romagna, Tuscany, Lazio, Marche and Abruzzo". On Sunday 27 July, the cyclone will quickly move away from Italy. To be reported, however, "a decisive strengthening of the winds from the northern quadrants with Mistral gusts of over 60 km/h in particular over Sardinia and the entire mid and lower Tyrrhenian".

'These currents,' Gussoni concludes, 'will cause temperatures to plummet over most of Italy with values that will be below the average for the period over most regions. In the South and on Sicily we expect about 10/15°C less than the current temperatures by Sunday". On Saturday 26 in the North there will be widespread thunderstorms alternating with sunny spells, in the Centre thunderstorms alternating with sunny breaks, especially on the Marches and Apennines and in the South sunshine and still warm weather. Sunday 27: thunderstorms in the North over the Alps, sunshine elsewhere, in the Centre mostly sunny, a few showers in inland areas and in the South mostly sunny. The tendency is for an intense wave of bad weather due to the arrival of a new cyclone with thunderstorms and hailstorms starting in the central and northern regions. Strong gale-force winds along the coasts.