Deluge in Italy sets European record: 29 inches of rain in 12 hours

Deluge in Italy sets European record: 29 inches of rain in 12 hours

The Washington Post reports:

An intense complex of thunderstorms stalled over northwestern Italy on Monday, unleashing a 12-hour torrent unrivaled in the history of European weather observations.

It’s the latest extreme rain event supercharged by climate change that follows a summer of historic deluges in the Northern Hemisphere.

In just 12 hours, 29.2 inches of rain fell in Rossiglione in Italy’s Genoa province, roughly 65 miles south-southwest of Milan and 10 miles north of the Mediterranean coastline. It marked the greatest 12-hour rainfall on record in Europe, according to Maximiliano Herrera, a climatologist who specializes in world weather extremes.

The amount of rain that came down in 12 hours is more than half the typical amount of rain that falls in the region over an entire year, which is just over 50 inches. It’s several times the average October rainfall of 6 to 7 inches. [Continue reading…]

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