Severe floods are impacting areas in southern Italy today, with videos posted to social media showing floodwater swirling through streets.
According to SevereWeather.eu extreme threat warnings for flash flooding in southern Italy are in place until October 6.
Currently major flash flooding can be seen in Catania, Sicily and in Pulsano (Ta), Puglia, south Italy this morning.
Churning in the skies above Italy is a V-shaped mesoscale convective system (MCS) causing intense storms and torrential rainfall onto the Calabria and Puglia regions.
A MCS is a complex of thunderstorms that becomes organised on a scale larger than the individual thunderstorms but smaller than extratropical cyclones, and normally lasts for several hours or more.
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Weather models show excessive rainfall accumulations across the region, beginning on Wednesday October 3, and lasting until Saturday evening, October 6.
Forecasters have predicted that some areas could see more than 10 inches of rain lasting until late Saturday.
This level of rain has triggered flash flood warnings for Sicily, Calabria, Puglia and Sardinia, with excessive floodwater already impacting Sicily and Puglia.
The progression of the storm system shows that southern mainland Italy, and the nearby islands of Sicily and Sardinia will experience very heavy and excessive rainfall tonight and into tomorrow.
This heavy rain will dissapate after Saturday when the weather system weakens.
The system, known as Medicane Zorbas, has drifted across the Mediterranean Ocean, sparking flash floodings in Tunisia and Lybia earlier this week.
Julian Heming, a tropical cyclone expert at the Met Office, said the storm sprung from a clash of cold air pushing south over the Balkans and warm air moving north from Africa.
Mr Heming said, “However, as it has strengthened over the warm waters of the Mediterranean Sea, it is starting to acquire some characteristics of a tropical cyclone,”
“Bands of thunderstorms are starting to wrap around the low pressure center, although are not yet concentrated close to the center, as you might see in a fully ‘tropical’ cyclone.”
Medicanes are a rare storm system, and usually are not assigned names, however this one has been dubbed Zorbas.
One meteorological journal in 2011 noted that “Medicanes are considered rare phenomena, since only a few have been directly observed.”
Medicanes can reach a strength similiar to that of a Category 1 hurricane.
More to follow