ska invita
back on the other side
Southern Italy braced for rare Mediterranean hurricane
‘Medicane’ storm with winds of 100km/h expected in Sicily, where two have died in flooding
The stats are scary
“Sicily is tropicalising and the upcoming Medicane is perhaps the first of this entity, but it certainly won’t be the last,” said Christian Mulder, a professor of ecology and climate emergency at the University of Catania. “We are used to thinking that this type of hurricane and cyclone begins in the oceans and not in a closed basin like the Mediterranean. But this is not the case.
“This Medicane is forming due to the torrid climate of north Africa and the warm waters of the Mediterranean Sea. The Aegean Sea has a temperature of 3C higher than the average, while the Ionian Sea has a temperature of almost 2C higher than the average. The result is a pressure cooker.”
According to forecasters, the Medicane could reach Sicily on Thursday or Friday and could finally leave the area between Saturday and Sunday.
“We are facing something exceptional,” said Giulio Betti, a meteorologist and climatologist at Italy’s national research council. “What is affecting Sicily and Calabria is a hybrid atmospheric event. It has the typical characteristics of a subtropical cyclone, but at times it holds the characteristics of a tropical-like cyclone. “The unique aspect is its duration and its stationing – that is, this atmospheric event is hard to dissolve. … on the one hand it continues to be fed by the cool western currents; on the other hand it is unable to move eastward, due to the Balkans’ anticyclone.”
The signs of change are becoming more frequent in Sicily, where in August a monitoring station in the south-eastern city of Syracuse recorded a temperature of 48.8C, the highest ever set in Europe. Data collected by the Balkans and Caucasus observatory put the average temperature rise on the island over the past 50 years at almost 2C, rising to 3.4C in Messina on the north-east coast.
