ANSA – A temperature of 48.8°C was registered in the province of Siracusa on Wednesday by Sicily’s SIAS agency in what looks set to be a new European record.
“If the figure is confirmed after the appropriate analysis, it could be the highest value ever registered on the European continent,” said 3bmeteo.com meteorologist Manuel Mazzoleni. “That would beat the previous record of 48°C taken in Athens on July 10, 1977 and it would even beat the record of 48.5°C recorded at an unofficial station at Catenanuova in August 1999”.
Italy is currently baking in the Lucifer heatwave, which is expected to peak later this week. 15 cities are set to be on red alert. When a city is on red alert it means the heat is so intense it is a danger to the health of the general population and not just the elderly and the fragile. The 15 cities that will be on red alert on Friday are Bari, Bologna, Bolzano, Brescia, Cagliari, Campobasso, Florence, Frosinone, Latina, Palermo, Perugia, Rieti, Rome, Trieste and Viterbo. Eight of those cities were already on red alert on Wednesday.
Scientists say the climate crisis is causing heatwaves and extreme weather events to be more frequent and more intense.
ANSA
