L’anticyclone Minos is about to bring the first series heat wave generalized in the summer of 2024 throughout Italy. An anticyclone is an atmospheric region characterized by high pressure, where air sinks downward and warms, bringing stable, sunny weather conditions. Minos will arrive from Africa in the first days of the week and will drag with it humid and hot air masses from the Sahara desert towards the Mediterranean Sea, causing temperatures to rise by up to 10 °C above the climatic averages of mid-June, especially in the Center and to the South.
These intense and widespread hot conditions will continue until at least Thursday 20 June, with temperatures likely to reach 42°C in Puglia, Sardinia and Sicily during the hottest hours of the day. In many other regions, temperatures, although not reaching those figures, will reach above 35 °C, with peaks of 38°C in Campania, Lazio, Umbria, Marche and Tuscany, as well as on the northern plains. First, however, bad weather is expected, with storms over the weekend and unpredictable weather forecasts.
Where the storm warning is triggered
Although anticyclone Minos brings stability and warmth, conditions could quickly change with the arrival of cool and unstable air currents from Northern Europe. These currents will interact with the warm and humid air, creating a situation of strong contrast that could result in extreme weather events, including storms with hail.
In the weekend of June 15th and 16th two disturbances are expected. The first, that of Saturday, will mainly affect the northern regions, bringing instability especially in the Alpine areas and marginally in the plain sectors. The second, the one on Sunday, will cross Sardinia and the central and southern regions, with smaller effects, mainly concentrated on the island.
New storms will arrive during the week, although it is difficult to do forecast spot on after several days, given the contrast of phenomena that make the changes increasingly sudden. It is no mystery, in fact, that even the most competent meteorologists find themselves in difficulty when faced with the effects of global warming, which has changed climate models and made it more difficult to anticipate the passage of clouds and different temperatures. Let’s see what awaits us over the weekend, as noted by the Air Force.
Weather forecast for Saturday 15th
Saturday 15 June there will be many compact clouds in the North, especially over Liguria, the Alps, the Pre-Alps and related foothill areas, with scattered rain and local thunderstorms, more frequent and widespread in northern Piedmont and the Lombardy mountains. In the center and in Sardinia the sky will initially be clear and then clouded in the evening hours. Medium-high clouds will appear on the island in the final hours of the day, but they will be harmless. In the South and in Sicily the weather will be stable and very sunny, albeit with some harmless haze which will make the sky at times more opaque from the afternoon.
Weather forecast for Sunday 16th
Sunday 16 June there will still be many clouds over Liguria, the Alps, the Pre-Alps and related foothill areas with rain and some thunderstorms in the central hours. The situation will return in the late afternoon and towards the evening, with openings on the westernmost mountains and on the Ligurian east.
A few isolated short showers or thunderstorms will be possible during the night and in the first part of the morning also between the flat areas of Piedmont and the Emilian area, while the rest of the territory will initially be affected by clouds, even thick ones, which will then tend to dissolve from the early hours evenings with large clearings.
In the Center and in Sardinia, increasingly thick and consistent clouds are expected in the peninsular regions, with the risk of some brief afternoon showers in the Apennine areas. On Sardinia there will be extensive cloud cover accompanied by local rain and showers, easing towards the evening, with a starry sky after sunset. In the South and in Sicily the sky will be veiled with high and thin clouds, thicker from the afternoon starting from the Tyrrhenian regions and Sicily. Then the heat waves of Minos will arrive.
