Nothing seems to have changed, or almost nothing. Exactly one year after the flood which disrupted the lives of many Emilia-Romagna people from 16 May 2023, bad weather is causing fear again in several places, from Piacenza to Rimini. Faenza, Lugo, Cotignola, Sant’Agata sul Santerno, Russi, Bagnacavallo and other municipalities in the Ravenna area ended up under water again, with entire areas remaining in the dark last night. The fields of Cotignolafor example – fruit, vineyards, wheat – found themselves flooded within a few hours, just as the streets of Sant’Antonio, north of Ravenna, were covered in hail in a few minutes.
Bad weather hits the region again: one year after the flood
In Cotignola, the administration and the Civil Protection are continuing to monitor the situation even in these hours: at the moment the most compromised area is the artisanal one, where a civil protection team was activated equipped with a motor pump to facilitate the flow of water. These have in fact also entered in the factories of various companies. The concern is for the afternoon hours, with storm cells difficult to locate.
The damage in the province of Bologna
It didn’t go any better even in the Bolognese area, for Mordano and Crevalcore: here, a strong storm with hail flooded streets, blew up pavements and knocked down trees.
The weather forecast for the next few hours
Storms which, net of the damage and concern, cannot entirely be compared to those of last year. To shed some light on this matter, Pierluigi Randi, president of Ampro-Professional Weather Association: “On our Apennines it rained very little or not at all, so the impact on the rivers is almost zero and there is no need to worry”, he explained, with a clear reference to the dozens and dozens of rivers that flooded on that dramatic night a year ago , at the same time.
The scenario is different from the flood
“However, the violent rains in a short time they caused urban and rural flooding as the network drained urban and extra-urban (sewers, canals, ditches) could not handle the enormous amounts of rain in a short time – he later added in a post on his official channels -. Unlike last year, with continuous and insistent rains (over 30 hours for each of the two main events) over a very large area (half the region) and with enormous accumulations on the reliefs, today we are in the full mesoscalewith very violent rains (and even hail) in a short time (maximum two hours) and localized in lowland areas (in some areas it almost didn’t rain).
In a few hours between 60 and 65 millimeters of rain
Some data, in any case, can be emblematic: in Lugo between 60 and 65 mm of rain fell, in Bagnacavallo north 58 mm; in Cotignola 40 mm; in Solarolo 43 mm. «So, in less than two hours the rain that normally falls in those areas during the entire month of May fell, given that the climatological values vary between 55 and 65 mm» Randi highlighted.
The alert remains in the region
After a partial respite this morning, although it is continuing to rain in some areas and with a warning that remains yellow for thunderstorms throughout the north of the region (and a yellow warning for hydraulic criticality between the plain and the low hills of Piacenza and of the Parma area), this afternoon things should get even worse: «Showers and thunderstorms widespread in the afternoon, in particular on the plain sectors, and in transit towards the eastern provinces of the region with locally intense and persistent phenomena – the Emilia-Romagna Weather Center reports –, possible episodes of hail and strong gusts of wind; in Romagna, more discontinuous and generally less intense phenomena, particularly towards the coast, although with the possibility of isolated storms. General exhaustion of precipitation since the early evening, but even intense thunderstorms are still possible on the lower plains”.
