An end of February in the grip of bad weather and frost for all of Italy. In these days, as announced a few days ago, it's raining and will continue to do so insistently throughout the peninsula: from yesterday until Sunday abundant snowfalls are expected even at low altitudes, with snowfall also in the plains in the Centre-North, and incessant rain in the South and on the Islands.
A very intense perturbation that will only end between Sunday and Monday, then leaving room for Burian, the icy wind arriving from Siberia, which at the beginning of next week will envelop Italy in an extreme and even unusual cold for this period of the year: on Monday the minimum temperatures will drop below zero everywhere in the Centre-North (Milan and Turin -5, Bologna -6) and they will struggle to stay above the Center-South, excluding the islands where the climate will remain mild and the sun will return. In the Centre-North the maximum temperatures will also be very low: in Turin, Trieste, Bologna, Florence and Milan they should remain below zero, and in Rome they should stop at 5 degrees.
However, on Monday, at least in the North, some sun will return, while it will continue to snow especially on the Adriatic side, the most exposed to the Arctic sabre. The cold will remain freezing even on Tuesday, albeit with an improvement in terms of rainfall, but in the middle of the week it could be a new deterioration.
The forecasts have already triggered the alarm from the Civil Protection, and Fs and Trenitalia have already activated the "Snow and Frost Plans": at the moment the full availability of all railway lines is confirmed but the services may undergo changes based on the deterioration of the weather conditions. Trenitalia's "Snow and Frost Plan" provides for the enhancement of customer assistance services and, in the event of worsening weather conditions and particularly intense phenomena, the rescheduling of transport services with a progressive reduction of trains and a timetable, as well as specific technical and organizational measures to ensure the regularity of the rescheduled service.
According to the experts of the Epson Meteo center, this cold is not entirely anomalous for the end of February, but it is certainly quite rare and will to compensate for the month of January which was rather mild compared to the average. A winter will come out in line with its averages, therefore in contrast with the last ones, decidedly "warmer". Even spring could be slow to explode: the month of March, according to climate projections, could be cooler than expected.
