Hannibal heats up Italy, record temperatures risk

One month in Summer: on June 21st at 11:13 am the Solstice will arrive and we will enter the new warm and sunny season. This year it will be difficult to savor the difference between Spring and the new season, as we are already experiencing days that remind us of August 15th. With the Anti-cyclone Hannibal, however, there is a risk of writing a hot page in the history of Italian weather: in the Po Valley, some records that have lasted for 10-20 years could be beaten, such as the 36 degrees of Verona in 2009 or the 35 reached in May of the same year. in Milan, Pavia, Parma, Ferrara, Brescia and Bergamo. These absolute maximums for the month of May were recorded at the airports, with a data series spanning up to 50 years. In some cases, the records have stood for 20 years as evidence of the exceptional nature of this heat wave. The greatest probability of having new records concerns Piedmont and locally Emilia, the peak should be reached between today and tomorrow.But why all this heat? Mattia Gussoni, meteorologist of the site www.iLMeteo.it, explains that the particular synoptic configuration, with the anticyclone Hannibal rising from Tunisia towards Spain then France and now Italy, is associated with rather accentuated meridian undulations in this period: in other words, while an anticyclonic wave is present in Italy, the opposite occurs in the east with a descent of polar air which is maintaining values ​​decidedly below the average in Turkey, Ukraine and locally in Greece. Another ‘cold’ ripple is preparing from the Atlantic to descend towards Portugal and could trigger a drastic change in Italy next week: we introduce the ‘Cold Drop’, from Tuesday 24 May a nucleus could arrive on Italy of polar air descending from North-West Europe with even strong thunderstorms and a drop in temperatures. Initially the ‘Cold Drop or Cut-Off’, it is in fact a depression area that could isolate itself on the Mediterranean, it will hit the North and then move towards the Center-South from Wednesday 25 May. A reversal that would probably be associated with violent storms, hailstorms and gusts of wind; obviously still missing 4-5 days before the expected entry into the scene of the ‘Cold Drop’, we await confirmation, but we cannot exclude that from a weekend of record heat it will pass to a ‘stormy’ period: from Hannibal to the ‘Cold Drop’, a ‘ cold shower ‘for lovers of the sun and early summer weather. IN DETAIL: Saturday 21. In the North: summer sun with peak heat, exceptional values ​​for the period; isolated thunderstorms of heat on the Alps. In the Center: sun and summer heat. In the South: sun and heat. Sunday 22. In the North: summer sun with exceptional values ​​for the period; rare heat storms in the Alps and partial increase of clouds in the North-East. In the center: sun and summer heat. In the South: sun and summer heat. Monday 23. In the North: summer sun with a lot of heat but with the arrival of the first widespread storms in the Alps. In the Center: sun and summer heat. In the South: sun and summer heat. Trend. From Tuesday, May 24, possible entry of an Atlantic perturbation in the North with scattered thunderstorms, following the isolation of a closed depression at high altitude (Cold Drop or Cut-Off) with very unstable weather from North to South at least until Friday 27 May.