The clear sky and the air finally free from the humidity that we breathed yesterday morning (June 23, 2024) are atmospheric variables destined to be quickly archived under the hat of a brief period of sunshine. After the wave of bad weather that hit the Bergamo area and part of Lombardy on Friday evening, causing damage especially in Val Seriana, New storms are on the way. «At least until Wednesday – he says Mattia Gussoni, meteorologist at iLMeteo.it —. The first storm front will cross the entire province from West to East, hitting the high plains and the Orobie.”
Friday’s storm, although it didn’t last long, it was violent, after a hot day; a wall of water to which hail was then added, which dumped the greatest quantity of rain along the Lecco side of the Orobie: «In Valsassina we recorded peaks of 80 and 90 millimeters of rain which fell in a very short time, with landslides and some flooding. While in Valcanale and in the middle Seriana Valley the water fall reached peaks of 50 millimetres”. In the bulletin of the day following the storm, however, the wind is the element to which the greatest damage can be attributed: always remaining in the Val Seriana quadrant, the cells installed at Baita Termen on Monte Pora recorded wind gusts of 100 kilometers per hour.
«At the Capanna 2000 refuge around 80 kilometers per hour, as in Schilpario, and going down towards the valley floor at around 70 kilometers per hour – adds Gussoni -. More than enough to do damage.” Such as taking off roofs, catapulting them onto the street or onto other buildings, or cutting down trees and breaking branches. In the space of half an hour, between 8pm and 8.30pm on Friday, in Albano Sant’Alessandro the roof of a Bfe srl warehouse, in via Tonale, was lifted by the wind and thrown onto a field. The same fate befell the roof of the middle school and a municipal building in Ponte Nossa. Damage counting is also underway in Vertova: a tree collapsed on a car with two passengers on board (only minor injuries for one of them), while in via Cinque Martiri the roofs of about ten houses are compromised (two, however, have been completely demolished). To the point that, for security reasons, Mayor Riccardo Cagnoni has signed an ordinance that closes the access road to Val Vertova until it is cleared. «It could be reopened to traffic on Monday – reassures Cagnoni -. The tornado was extremely violent, the damage was all concentrated within a 400 meter perimeter. Luckily no one was hurt, but parts of some roofs and sheets of metal were carried by the wind to a distance of over 40 metres.” Civil protection, companies and volunteers are working to clear the road and cover the roofs with sheathing, to avoid infiltrations with the next rains. «All this while waiting for definitive works — continues Cagnoni —. I believe that the tornado hit that point so hard also due to the shape of the area; a vortex was created on the mountainside.”
The one arriving is a storm front coming from Northern Europe, explains Mattia Gussoni: «In the initial phase we expect the most intense phenomena, even with local hailstorms. The spring was one of the rainiest in Lombardy and the amount of water that usually falls over the course of an entire year has already dropped.” Wanting to find a positive fact, the storm has «eliminated that Saharan dust which in recent days was clouding the sky throughout Italy». Between Friday evening and yesterday afternoon they were more than 60 calls collected by the Bergamo fire brigade also for flooded cellars and garages. And for trees fallen on the road almost everywhere in the Bergamo area: not only from Albino and Gazzaniga, along the Nembro-Selvino and up the valley to Clusone.
But also on the plains, for example in Treviolo, in Treviglio, along the state road 42 between Albano and Brusaporto. «However, all the roads under our responsibility are practicable», specifies Massimiliano Rizzi, manager of the strategic road development unit of the Province. Between Friday and yesterday there was no shortage ofInterruptions in the supply of electricity due to problems with the lines, which were then resolved. In the upper part of Ponteranica, in Lonno, a hamlet of Nembro, and in some hamlets of Alzano Lombardo: Olera, Burro, Brumano and part of Busa di Nese. «The most complicated area to restore was Olera, but at 5.30 in the morning it had already been re-powered – explains the mayor of Alzano, Camillo Bertocchi -. E-distribuzione is intervening with generators.”
