Cyclone Attila batters Italy

(ANSA) - Rome, October 22 - 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.