“Although there was considerable damage, fortunately there were no lists of victims and so the media attention was relegated from the front pages. Yet the weather events on Lombardy And Veneto they had a worrying analogy with the disastrous flood of a year ago in Emilia Romagna: then as today, albeit with a different intensity of the phenomena, two extreme events followed one another within a short time, concentrated on the same areas, pouring into territories already saturated with water and therefore not capable of absorbing further, large amounts quantities (in recent days in Brianza, central Emilia and between the provinces of Belluno, Vicenza, Verona, Treviso)“: this is highlighted by the weekly report from the ANBI Observatory on Water Resources.
What distinguishes May 2024 from a year ago, the report continues, “it is the climatic context in which the events occurred: then they occurred after a long period of extreme drought with arid and therefore more impermeable soils, increasing the speed of the “sliding” of the water towards the valley with the known disastrous consequences; today, however, they are affecting lands which, following a particularly rainy spring, were already soaked and therefore unable to absorb further quantities of water: hence the need to make it flow as quickly as possible towards the sea through rivers and channels“.
“What happened and what will be repeated in the next major meteorological event confirms, as we have been denouncing for years, the insufficiency of the Italian hydraulic network in the face of the consequences of the climate crisis – he comments Francis VincenziPresident of the National Association of Land and Irrigation Water Management and Protection Consortia (ANBI) – At the same time it demonstrates the importance of expansion basins which, where they exist and are operational, play a fundamental function at least in holding back flood waves”.
“We need an extraordinary maintenance plan for the area and the creation of new hydraulic infrastructures to control the extremes of atmospheric events – he adds Maximum GarganoDirector General of ANBI – Otherwise this function is in fact carried out by the flooding of the fields with inevitable consequences, however, on crop cycles, reminding everyone that agriculture is an economy, but above all it produces food”.
To better understand the extent of the facts, ANBI continues, “it is enough to mention the quantities of releases from the large northern lakes that are practically at capacity: the overall flow rate from Maggiore (filling: 115.4%), Lario (68.2%), Benaco (102.9%) and Sebino (90 .7%) reached 1650 cubic meters per second, feeding rivers that are also overloaded with water such as the Ticino (which rose to a level of 306 centimetres, i.e. almost half a meter more than last week before the rains), the Adda (downstream of Lake Como it reached a height of 3.40 m, when it was 2.19 m before the rains), the Mincio (+70 cm compared to a week ago)“.
In Veneto,”where there were numerous and widespread floods, rainfall of between 100 and 176 millimeters in 24 hours was recorded in various municipalities in the Vicenza Pre-Alps, feeding basins which had already collected, a few days earlier, cumulative amounts of up to 200 millimetres. (in Velo d’Astico: 229 mm in one day + 30 mm the following day): the Astico river reached a flow rate of 110 cubic meters per second while, before the wave of bad weather, the flow was mc/s 3.74 approx.; The Muson dei Sassi, once again becoming scary, overflowed after reaching 122 m3/s. The flows of the Bacchiglione (reached 327.37 m3/s), Brenta (reached 730 m3/s), Adige (reached 730 m3/s) are still of concern. /s 772.21). There Lombardywhich last week had to deal with the flooding and flooding of the Seveso and Lambro rivers, in recent days has continued to record 3-digit rainfall in the municipality of Seveso and around eighty centimeters in other Brianza areas .
Even in the central area ofEmilia Romagna there were floods in the provinces of Modena, Bologna and in the Parma area, where the Scodogna torrent overflowed; now the flow values of the Apennine rivers are above average, with the exception of the Reno and Santerno. As for the rest of Italy, in Valle d’Aosta the flow rates of Dora Baltea and the Lys stream are reduced. In Piedmont the levels of the Tanaro and Stura di Lanzo rivers are increasing, while those of the Stura di Demonte and Toce are decreasing. In a week the flow of the Po river, which was already abundant, doubles in the Lombard and Emilian surveys: in Pontelagoscuro, in the Ferrara area, the flow is over 150% more than the average!! In Liguria the levels of the Magra, Entella, Vara and Argentina rivers are rising“.
River levels are also rising Tuscany: the Arno “returns to exceed the flow rate of 100 cubic meters per second in Ponte a Signa; The levels of Serchio and Sieve are also above average, while the Ombrone remains in a water deficit. Despite recent water increases, river levels continue to be low in the area Marche, where Tronto and Esino stand out, in a negative sense; the reservoirs still hold volumes exceeding 52 million cubic metres. In Umbria, not even the rains of recent days have allowed a recovery in the level of Lake Trasimeno, which actually decreases by a further 2 centimeters and seems destined to face the summer heat below the minimum vital level set at -120 cm (it is now at – 128 cm, well 83 cm below average); On the other hand, the flows of the Topino and Chiascio rivers are growing, while the Paglia remains stable. The river Tiber it is decreasing both in the lower Umbrian course and in Rome, where the flow rate stands at just over 82 cubic meters per second, when the monthly average is greater than 200 m3/s; in Lazio, slight drops are also recorded by the Aniene and Fiora, while the Velino marks a substantial invariance in the territories of Alta Sabina. The decline of Lake Nemi continues slowly but inexorably, whose hydrometric level is now 45 centimeters below that of last year. The river level is also decreasing Volturno from the Molise stretch to the mouth: the current hydrometric height is lower than that of the previous five-year period. Also in Campania, Sele also declines, while Garigliano records an imperceptible growth“.
The long dry season continues inItaly southern,”where the artificial reservoirs, which last year had saved the irrigation and tourist seasons during the hottest summer in history, today have to deal with the scarcity of the retained water resource, threatening agricultural production in almost all regions of the South, where even the mass arrival of summer holidaymakers is now viewed by public administrators with growing concern. It’s so in Basilicata, where every week the reservoirs release over 4 million cubic meters of water and less than 330 remain available, certainly insufficient to meet the needs of the summer season; last year, 163 million more were available. The same happens in Puglia, where the deficit for 2023 is almost 139 million cubic meters and the San Pietro basin on the Osento river, one of the top 4 in the region, holds less than 1 and a half million cubic meters of water on a capacity of over 17 ; last year it was 100% full. In the Occhito reservoir, the largest in the region, over 106 million cubic meters of water are missing out of a potential of over m3. 250! In Calabria, the Coscile and Lao rivers are growing, while the flow rate of the Ancinale is almost zero. In Sicily the recent rainfall (on average less than 10 mm with cumulative maximum around 20 mm) certainly cannot be a solution to a condition of extreme drought, which has lasted for just under a year on the island, where temperatures have already been rising for some time reached 30 degrees“.
Finally, the Sardinia “where, in the internal areas of Nuoro and Oristano but also in the internal and coastal areas of the provinces of Medio Campidano and Carbonia-Iglesias, a precious rainfall contribution, quantifiable between mm. 40 and mm. 60, has recently offered some relief to territories that have been dry for too long. The situation on the east coast remains serious, where between the months of February and April 2024 there was a rainfall deficit estimated at between mm. 80 and mm. 148 and where so far the month of May has brought cumulative rainfall, insufficient to rebalance the enormous water deficit in territories now close to the arrival of a large number of tourists“.
“Despite the repetition of violent events, Italian politics does not pay active attention to the repeated alarms that the entire scientific community has launched regarding the rapid evolution of global warming with ocean temperatures which have never been so high for over 12 months and the risks of destructive events, which are taking place around the world, from Brazil to Kenya. The short memory of this country means that a problem is quickly forgotten as soon as a new one arises and, despite an Italy meteorologically divided in half, it continues to struggle to consider drought and floods as sides of the same coin, planning solutions to prevent its consequences,” concludes the President of ANBI.
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