Meteo Italia: brief respite before northern deterioration

Italy is enjoying the last days of stable and sunny weather before the return of bad weather. A new Atlantic disturbance is approaching and, starting from Wednesday, September 16, will mainly affect the northern regions, bringing showers and thunderstorms. The worsening is expected to be more pronounced in the Alps and central-northern Lombardy, extending in the afternoon-evening to Liguria, Emilia, and the plains of Lombardy and Veneto.

Meanwhile, in the South, particularly in Sicily and Calabria, unstable conditions persist due to a cyclone over the southern Mediterranean, with possible localized rainfall. The rest of the country, however, continues to benefit from predominantly dry and sunny weather, with temperatures slightly rising in the Central-North and a northern circulation over the Middle and Lower Adriatic.

The current weather situation is the result of two distinct phenomena. On one hand, a recovery of high pressure has brought stability to much of Italy following the passage of an unstable wave in the middle of last week. However, this condition is more established in the west than over our longitudes, making it vulnerable.

On the other hand, unstable currents have persisted for days over the far South, fueled by a stationary cyclone over the southern Mediterranean, which continue to bring local rainfall to Sicily and Calabria. The real new development comes from the North Atlantic, where a new unstable trough has formed. This system, pushed eastward, will reach the Italian Alps on Wednesday the 16th, initiating a period of bad weather that will last until Friday the 18th. The evolution is being monitored by the models of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), which track the path of the disturbed front from the Balearic Islands toward Northern Italy.