Florence, 18 June 2024 – Il heat announced is coming: gradual growth until Thursday-Friday, key days, then at the weekend an Atlantic disturbance should bring cooler air. Today temperatures between 35 and 36 degrees were recorded in Florence (Botanic Garden station, the hottest in Tuscany with 35.6°), Artimino (Prato) and around 35° in the provinces of Massa-Carrara, Lucca and Grosseto. Thursday should see the peak with 37-38 degrees between the provinces of Florence, Siena and Grosseto.
But in addition to the heat, heat is also on the way sand: which should then be more correctly called dust because sand – as explained by the Lamma – “it is in fact too heavy and coarse (between approximately 0.1 and 2 millimetres) to be transported up to medium tropospheric altitudes by vertical motions and winds. The smallest particles, on the contrary, if inserted into a sufficiently intense flow, are able to overcome the force of gravity and can travel thousands of kilometers before settling.”
“Starting from Wednesday 19th and until Friday 21st very warm air masses of desert origin will reach Italy – continues Lamma – driven by intense southern winds at medium tropospheric altitudes (between 3000 and 5000 metres). This flow, triggered by the presence of a deep depression vortex on the Iberian peninsula, will transport large quantities of Saharan dust towards Italy and central-eastern Europe, giving rise to an intrusion of anomalous proportions. The extension of the phenomenon and the dust concentrations predicted by the dispersion models are, in fact, considered unusual. Between Friday and Saturday the vortex over Spain will move to France and then move to Eastern Europe; the transit of the disturbance will favor the rotation of the winds in the western quadrants, putting an end to the intrusion of desert dust on Italy and the Tuscany”.
On the one hand, this is good news for women plant terrestrial and aquatic which benefit from the transported micronutrients (especially phosphorus for the former and iron for the latter), on the other hand the arrival of dust causes PM10 readings to skyrocket. However, it is not strange that it happens in June, which together with May and October is the month in which the phenomenon occurs most frequently.
The forecast is for the arrival of dust as early as the evening of Tuesday 18th, concentrated between 2000 and 3000 metres; on the 19th the estimated amount of dust increases significantly and begins to reach lower altitudes; the 20th represents the day of maximum intensity, both at altitude and on the ground and starting from the 21st it begins to decrease, although the values are still quite high.
