Parts of Italy have been pummelled by a huge hailstorm just days after the country experienced a 40C heatwave.
Footage on social media shows small ice sheets forming inside fast-moving water bursting through the streets of Seregno, a town near Milan in northern Italy.
“It looks like a river flowing,” the person filming says as floodwaters deluge the area.
It comes after days of unprecedented hot weather, which led to tourists and locals sheltering indoors during the scorching daytime hours, popular sights being deserted and travellers cancelling trips.
Just watching @wizbates explaining that the row about Uxbridge and ULEZ means politicians may increasingly row back on green commitments. Meanwhile Rhodes is on fire and this was northern Italy yesterday. I don’t think I can cope with much more idiocy. pic.twitter.com/L2OjOu6vWo
— Brendan May (@bmay) July 22, 2023
Naples was on a red heat alert warning last week, but temperatures have since dropped to between 35C and 40C for the week ahead.
Italy has been battered by storms in recent days and a tornado tore through the country’s north-west on Friday.
Firefighters were deployed to around 110 incidents in Cernusco sul Naviglio and Gessate in Lombardy, north-east of Milan, after a tornado wreaked havoc.
Several people were injured, and the European Storm Forecast Experiment issued an "extremely bad" weather warning for all of northern Italy.
Winds of 125 miles per hour were reported in Bergamo, and in Brescia two workers were hit by windows that were torn off a building. Both men are in a serious condition.
July could be hottest since records began July is set to be the Earth’s hottest month since records began, a Nasa climate expert has said.
Gavin Schmidt, the director of Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said recent weeks, in which there have been heatwaves across Europe and North America, have also increased the likelihood that 2023 will become the hottest year on record.
He said: "We are seeing unprecedented changes all over the world. There has been a decade-ondecade increase in temperatures throughout the last four decades."
Temperatures remain at around 40C in Italy, and the heatwave is expected to return to the country next week.
