Italy is coming down from its first heatwave of the summer, with parts of the country registering highs of up to 40°C. What’s in store for the rest of the season and how hot is it expected to be?
Heatwave Scipione may be starting to cool off, but Italian weather experts say people across the country should brace themselves for another long and sweltering summer.
July and August are set to be characterised by “long-lasting and persistent heatwaves,” says meteorologist Mattia Gussoni in weather site ilmeteo.it.
Current projections from cross-border research institute The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts indicate that temperatures across the peninsula (and much of Europe) could reach highs of up to 3°C above seasonal averages.
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The south of Italy and the islands of Sardinia and Sicily are expected to be particularly heavily affected, with highs of 40°C or more currently forecast for the first half of July.
It looks like it’s going to be “the summer of the super anticyclone,” says meteorologist Alessio Grosso on weather site Meteo Live.
The African anticyclones, or high-pressure zones, typically responsible for Italy’s heatwaves originate in the Sahara, bringing scorching desert air that arrives in the country with high levels of humidity absorbed from the Mediterranean.
Based on forecasts from the Global Forecast System, a numerical weather prediction model, Grosso predicts that temperatures over the coming weeks will be “consistently above average, though without exceptional peaks.”
That means that while it will be much warmer than normal, it doesn’t necessarily look as though this summer will break all previous heat records in Italy.
The highest ever temperature recorded in continental Europe was in Syracuse, Sicily on August 11th, 2021, when mercury levels reached 48.8°C (119.8°F).
Since then, Rome has set its own heat record of 41.8°C on July 18th, 2023, while Milan registered a record high of 33°C on August 25th of the same year.
While weather conditions are expected to be hot and sunny for most of the summer, that doesn’t preclude the possibility of intense summer thunderstorms in some areas, says Gussoni.
These can include rare summer hailstorms and even tornados, as well as more typical rainstorms that tend to last between one and two hours.