Storms and Floods

Tropical Storms - Roundup of Tropical Storms:

No current tropical storms.

NewsBytes:

Malta - A rare "Medicane" - a hybrid storm with characteristics of both a tropical storm and an extratropical storm - formed over the South Central Mediterranean Sea on Friday and moved over the island of Malta, bringing it tropical storm-like conditions. Winds at the Luqa, Malta Airport looked suspiciously like what one would observe with a tropical storm passing overhead - a double peak with a near-calm in between, with the pressure falling to 984 mb during the calm. Winds peaked in Malta at 47 mph, gusting to 66 mph, at 6:37 pm local time, and the island was lashed with flooding rains. At least one funnel cloud was also observed.

Italy - Much of Italy remained on maximum weather alert on Friday as the wave of storms and torrential rain that has caused huge disruption and floods in many areas continued. Schools in Rome reopened as the level of alert there was lowered from red to orange, but students in other parts of the country, including the city of Frosinone near the capital and Catania in Sicily, had the day off as a precaution with storms forecast to arrive. Disruption also continued in Rome, despite the lowering of the alert, with floods causing one metro station to close on Friday, after four were temporarily shut on Thursday, and a woman passer-by was hurt when a tree fell amid torrential rain. The bad weather also contributed to major traffic congestion in the city. The bad weather system, which hit northern Italy first this week, causing massive damage and flooding in the Tuscan city of Carrara, has extended southwards. Strong winds and rain lashed Calabria and Puglia, while sea connections between Naples and the islands of Capri were suspended.

Alaska - A massive storm in the Bering Sea, off the western Alaska coast and to the east of Russia, strengthened enough to be considered the strongest storm that the turbulent region has ever seen. It may not be an official record, however, as the minimum central pressure of 924 millibars (mb) was estimated by meteorologists, since the storm is over the open ocean off the Kamchatka Peninsula.