It took time to wait, but in the end it arrived: the first great African heat wave of this summer is about to hit Italy, especially the Centre-South, which is exploding only now after a cool and rainy spring, even though yesterday the bad weather raged in the north with rain, thunderstorms and the flooding of Lake Como in the Lecco area. The temperatures, already high these days but still average, they will gradually rise until they reach their peak on Friday, with peaks that in some areas will touch 40 degrees. One of the hottest cities will be the capital Rome, where the mercury column will reach a maximum of 38 degrees, with the minimum already above 20 degrees, with a very high humidity especially at night.
It will go a little better in Milan, where the temperature will remain that of these days, around or slightly above 30 degrees. In the North, the weather was still unstable until Wednesday: full sun, with a relative rise in temperature, only arrives between Thursday and Friday. Indeed, the intense rainfall in Lombardy caused flooding in the Lecco area, with houses and businesses evacuated after the storm in the night between Tuesday and Wednesday. The material damage was particularly extensive, even if no victims or injuries were reported until Wednesday afternoon.
In general, on Friday almost all of Italy will exceed 30 degrees, especially in the South where the average in the big cities will be 33-34 degrees as the maximum value. Over the weekend, however, a mini truce immediately arrives, in the sense that the anticyclone will persist peacefully throughout the peninsula (except for some showers in the north, in the Alps), but with a slight drop in temperatures, which will return to more normal values, around or just above 30 degrees in the Saturday and Sunday days. The beginning of next week will then still be characterized by sun and heat: summer has begun.
