A new tornado is forming from Monday, May 22 that will particularly affect southern regions and those to the northwest, bringing more rain. It is less severe than the one that hit Emilia-Romagna and the Marche, Silvio Davolio told ANSA, it should run out quickly, while the low pressure area over the Mediterranean may bring more rain to the peninsula, in a general situation that still requires attention. . From the Institute of Atmospheric and Climatic Sciences of the National Research Council in Bologna.
“Like in the past, the new hurricane is forming over North Africa and will reach the Mediterranean Sea from Tunisia,” notes the expert in meteorology and atmospheric physics. For the rest, “there is no such thing as the last hurricane.” The latter, in fact, “has risen as far as central northern Italy, bringing heavy rains to Emilia-Romagna and the Marches. The new hurricane – says Davolio – seems less intense and should affect mainly Sicily, Sardinia and the northwest, in particular in Liguria and Piedmont, you will tend to dissipate.” In general, “it is still a situation of low pressure in the Mediterranean, favorable for the formation of rains also in Emilia-Romagna. Particularly intense phenomena are not expected, even if we are still in a state of emergency”. There is currently “a great deal of uncertainty” in the outlook and “only in the next few days will it be possible to define the situation more accurately.”
However, the fact that one hurricane after another reaches Italy in the middle of May should not surprise or frighten. “The word hurricane scares the public, but – notes Davolio – a hurricane is a dynamic structure of the general atmosphere in the Mediterranean and in some cases can be associated with intense events.” In particular, “The Mediterranean region is an area of the world where hurricanes are very frequent and known. The most violent of them occur in the winter, but can be present until May. However, they are weak in the summer.”
Thus, the arrival of a hurricane is not an unusual event in an intermediate season such as spring, while “the amount of rain that the last hurricane managed to bring to Emilia-Romagna is extraordinary. And this – the expert continues – happened because originally, the hurricane was already laden with moisture gained from the tropics and more gathered in the Mediterranean. Then heavy rains fell on a saturated land, in an area that had recently been flooded.” As for the relationship to climate change, Davolio notes that the tools that allow a cause-and-effect relationship to be established with respect to a single event are not yet ready. Therefore, only trends can be identified. “The scenarios – concludes expert Cnr – suggest that violent Mediterranean hurricanes like the one that just passed could become more frequent than in the past. It is a question of probability.”
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