Italy faces the hottest day of the current heatwave on Friday, with 16 cities on alert from north to south of the peninsula, some regions of which are also being ravaged by fires.
In the north, Milan, the capital of Lombardy, should hit 40 degrees and peaks of 39 degrees are expected in Bologna (north) and Rome (centre). On Thursday, the city of Pavia (north) broke its temperature record with 39.6 degrees.
Italy is “close to reaching the maximum force of the African anticyclone apocalypse4800. The number 4800 explains the situation very well (…) the thermometer only falls below zero at altitudes over 4800 meters,” emphasizes the specialized website ilmeteo.it.
Even after the passage of this new heat wave, no respite is to be expected. “For three consecutive months, May, June and July, the climate anomaly has been confirmed, with national-level temperatures at least two to three degrees above the seasonal average,” notes ilmeteo.it, adding that this anomaly in temperature levels is scheduled to last until the beginning of August.
Firefighters carried out dozens of operations against fires on Thursday. The biggest fire is burning in Tuscany near Massarosa, where 860 hectares have already burned and a thousand people have had to be evacuated. The origin of the disaster could be criminal in nature and the public prosecutor’s office in Lucca has launched an investigation.
According to the specialized European monitoring service Copernicus, 27,571 hectares were already engulfed by flames in Italy in 2022, compared to 39,904 in France, 199,651 in Spain, 149,324 in Romania and 48,106 hectares in Portugal.
According to Copernicus, the forest fires that have raged across Europe in recent weeks have already affected more areas than in all of 2021. In the 27 countries of the European Union they have devastated a total of 517,881 hectares since the beginning of the year (figures from July 16) .