Cyclone Attila battered Italy
Wednesday, unleashing icy gales across much of the country and
dumping early snow in the northeast.
The arrival of the weather system abruptly ended a long
warm spell that has outlasted by far any Indian summer in recent
memory.
Strong, bitterly cold winds whipped across Italy with
gusts up to 100 km/h in a number of locations and waves as
high as six metres along the coast of Sardinia.
"This is just the beginning," said Italy's national
weather centre, run by the Italian Air Force.
"A cold system was only to be expected after the
freakishly hot and unprecedentedly lengthy spell of good weather
since the summer," it said.
"Attila is going to punish us for what we have been
enjoying," it said.
However, the Bel Paese should be able to weather the
onslaught without seeing any more of the catastrophic floods
that have hit Liguria, weather experts say.
"And things should settle down with another patch of
clement weather once Attila has done its worst," the weather
centre stressed.
The violent mistral from the north has lashed Sardinia
since Tuesday afternoon with peaks of 120 km/h on the island's
northeastern coast.
The winds have so far caused limited interference for
flights and ferries, delaying one direct flight from Cagliari to
Rome and suspending some ferry connections for the beach resort
town Carloforte.
Firemen have been alerted to a collapsed roof and fallen
debris, while forest fires have been worsened by the winds.
"It was a night of fear in the Ogliastra area," local
officials said.
Wind triggered dozens of calls to firemen in the Turin
area, including reports of fallen trees and branches.
Gusts reached 100 km/h in nearby mountains and 60 km/h on
the plain, reported the environmental agency ARPA Piedmont.
In Parma, authorities ordered the city's parks to be
closed until Thursday because of the relentless winds.
Rough seas suspended ferries to the islands of Elba and
Capraia on the Tuscan coast, and to Capri from Naples.
Conditions are expected to worsen on the Tuscan coast over
the next 12 hours, a weather bulletin said.
Eastern and northeastern Italy were also affected, with a
sand storm reported in Pescara on the Adriatic coast and
property damage in Bolzano, near the Austrian border.
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