VIDEO: Over 100 injured as tennis ball-sized hail rains down on northern Italy
Most people sustain injuries from slipping or broken glass
July 20, 2023
A deadly hail storm featured tennis ball-sized hail that injured at least 110 people in a region of northern Italy overnight Wednesday, according to local media.
As a result of an unprecedented storm, the streets of Veneto were covered with hailstones of up to 10cm in diameter, according to regional president Luca Zaia.
According to CNN, the Veneto regional civil protection said that emergency services received more than 500 calls requesting help due to damage to property and personal injuries.
Workers have started taking down trees and other plants that were severely damaged by the storm and removing glass from windows that were broken.
“The wave of bad weather, after having impacted our mountain regions, has now also hit the plains, causing injury to some people,” Zaia said, adding that most injuries were caused by broken glass and people slipping on the hailstones.
A 53-year-old man riding his bicycle died during the storm when his wife, who was following him in their car, ran over him, Sky24 reported.
This year, there have been notable weather changes around Europe varying from the oppressive heat in Italy, Spain, and Greece for days while Rome, the capital of Italy, set a new record high on Tuesday by reaching 41 degrees Celsius.
The recent heat wave was named Cerberus by the Italian Meteorological Society in honour of the three-headed monster that serves as a guard at the gates of hell in Dante's Inferno.
The head of the Italian Meteorological Society, Luca Mercalli, told CNN that "the earth has a high fever and Italy is feeling it firsthand."
Additionally, over 20 rivers in the Emilia Romagna region of northern Italy burst their banks in May, causing a wave of landslides and 'once in a century fatal flooding in certain areas.
While the human-caused climate crisis surges, scientists are determined that the temperatures have no plans to calm down any time soon, and extreme weather events will only become more frequent and more intense.
