No, it hasn't been a particularly hot summer. Not that there has been no lack of heat waves, in particular that of the first ten days of August, but pending the definitive data on the season (which for meteorologists ends on August 31st) it can already be said that, especially as regards the month of July, that of 2018 will have been a less hot summer than that of 2017. “We don't have the definitive data yet – explains Raffaele Salerno, general manager of the Epson Meteo Center – but the sensations are these: even in terms of rainfall, compared to last year's drought emergency, we had a more normal season. It didn't rain a lot, apart from some exceptional events, but we were coming from a winter and a spring in which there was even more rainfall than necessary”.
A summer, therefore, without particular anomalies: marked by very high temperatures, at times even above the average for the period, but in contrast with the peaks of recent seasons. And in contrast also with respect to other European countries, which instead experienced an absolutely exceptional period: in France, for example, this was the second hottest summer ever. “Beyond the Alps, the phenomenon was extraordinary especially as regards the temperatures at night. But also in England – explains Salerno – in the months of June and July the temperatures were high and it hardly rained: a real anomaly for them”. In Italy, the extreme anomaly concerned the temperature of our seas, in particular the Adriatic but also some areas of the Tyrrhenian Sea: "On some days we have come to touch 30 degrees as surface temperature, when the average is between 25 and 27 degrees and sometimes it also happens that the water does not exceed 23 -24 degrees on the surface”.
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And what autumn will it be? “It's hard to say now”, underlines Salerno who warns “of the hoaxes circulating on the web. Forecasts that exceed 4-5 days leave the weather they find. There are climate models that give the sensation, but I repeat it is a sensation, that from the point of view of temperatures, the upcoming season will be more or less normal". Meanwhile, after the autumn parenthesis last weekend, summer has returned to Italy: a perturbation will pass between Friday and Sunday which, however, will not anticipate the arrival of autumn. “It's just a small window of bad weather, then summer comes back. We don't expect anomalies next week: after the passage of this front, the climate will return to being typical of that of the end of summer. Hot, but not too hot”, concludes the Epson Center meteorologist.
