Orange alert in four regions, storms across twelve: summer ends and the damage remains

For today the Civil Protection Department has issued an orange alert for storms in four regions: Emilia-Romagna, Marche, Tuscany and Veneto. The yellow alert covers Friuli Venezia Giulia, Lazio, Liguria, Lombardy, Piedmont, Sardinia, Trentino-Alto Adige and Umbria, for a total of twelve regions affected by the criticality bulletin. The situation is reported by Adnkronos and Fanpage.

Forecasts point to heavy showers and storms across the North and along the Apennine ridge, with hail episodes, while the South remains sunny. The low-pressure vortex crossing the peninsula is bringing a significant drop in temperatures, more pronounced in the North.

The regional level

Lazio activated an orange alert from the early hours of today for the following eighteen to twenty-four hours, with possible hail, gusts of wind and storm surges along the coast, according to the regional Civil Protection notice reported by Lazio TV. This is a case where the regional level is more severe than the national one: in the Department’s bulletin, Lazio appears in yellow.

The discrepancy is not an inconsistency. National bulletins assess criticality by alert zones, and regional administrations can adopt their own measures based on local forecasts. For readers, the practical consequence is that the color that matters for a specific territory is the one declared by its own regional authority.

The agricultural toll

The bad weather of these hours closes out the last heatwave of summer 2026, which ended on September 9 with locally intense rains and a temperature drop of up to eight degrees. Highs in central Italy are widely falling below twenty-five degrees, and from tomorrow, Friday September 11, the cooler air will also reach the South: by the weekend, values across the entire peninsula are expected not to exceed twenty-eight degrees, according to forecasts reported by Quotidiano Nazionale.

For agriculture, the shift is no relief. Coldiretti reports that the storms and heavy rains are compounding damage already caused by drought, with crop losses reaching up to 80% in some areas. The farmers’ organization also notes that businesses are burdened by rising costs for energy, fertilizers and irrigation incurred to save their crops, as reported by Leggo.

The sequence is one that agricultural organizations have been describing for months: the lack of water reduces yield, violent rain arrives when the soil is compacted and the harvest is already compromised, and hail strikes what remains.

What we don’t know

The 80% estimate is not neutral, in the technical sense of the term: it comes from an organization representing farmers, and in the available material it is not accompanied by any indication of which crops, which provinces were surveyed, or what measurement method was used. There is currently no institutional quantification of damage from the 2026 season.

Nor do we know what concrete effects today’s storms actually had: alert bulletins are forecasts of criticality, not records of events that have occurred. The verifiable fact right now is administrative: twelve regions have an active alert, and in four of them the level is orange.