Hello dear friends and welcome back to another wild weather blog! Here in the United States we have been dealing with unprecedented heat. Our long and hot summers prompt many Texans to travel during summertime and a popular overseas destination is Italy. In fact, summer (June-August) is the most popular time for Americans to visit the country filled with exquisite cuisine, captivating history, and breathtaking landscapes. Unfortunately this has been a devastating week for Italy as they have numerous deaths from intense wildfires in the southern half of the country, and in the northern half of the country there have been numerous deadly thunderstorms.

Wildfires and dangerous heat in southern Italy:

Across the pond, we have seen an intense heat wave as a high pressure system has been trapped over Southern Europe and Northern Africa. This has been very problematic as there are hundreds of fires across Italy and neighboring countries. Greece issued a state of emergency for the entire island of Rhodes due to the fires. These wildfires are closing roads, creating dangerous air quality, destroying homes and even temporarily closed the Palermo airport on Monday night and Tuesday morning as the fire got dangerously close to the terminals. Palermo is located on Sicily where temperatures have been extremely high. In Eastern Sicily temperatures hit 47.6C (which is over 115°F), which nearly broke the all-time record high temperature across Europe. Over a dozen Italian cities are under a “red alert” for high heat. The combination of high heat and sweeping winds has made firefighting efforts difficult, with over 5,000 firefighters working to contain the flames across the country.

Although the high temperatures and wind are helping fuel the fires, the most senseless part of this situation is that many fires were caused by humans, with arson being the cause of a fire in Calabria.

Extreme storms in northern Italy:

A cold front moved into Italy earlier this week, but the stark contrast between the cooler air and the intense heat led to an eruption of severe storms in the northern half of the country. Tennis ball sized hail and a tornado was reported near Milan last Friday. This past Monday, Azzano Decimo (a small town in far NW Italy) saw ENORMOUS hail. One hailstone that fell was recorded to be 7.58 inches in diameter making it the largest hailstone ever recorded in Europe, and only about half an inch smaller than the largest hailstone worldwide (which fell in South Dakota). The severe storms that tore through Northern Italy caused torrential rainfall and hurricane force winds that uprooted trees and destroyed buildings. Sadly several deaths have been reported, many from falling trees.

More storms will be possible across Northern Italy by early next week.

Something Good:

This week we finally got a break from the heat alerts! In June we saw 19 consecutive days (June 13-July 1) with a heat advisory or excessive heat warning which was a new record. This month we had a 16 day streak (July 9-July 21) which tied for second longest streak of consecutive alerts (the tie is with 2011). It’s certainly still been hot (it is July after all), but for a few days we have seen scattered afternoon showers! The rain is great for our dry ground as our southern counties are now in a moderate drought. Enjoy the slightly “cooler” weather while we have it, more heat alerts will be likely next week.

Stay safe always,

Caroline