Cloudburst hits Elba Island, flooding in Cavo: orange alert in Liguria

The autumn bad weather that this newspaper has been following for weeks — the last episode reported concerned the return of rain to the South after the anomalous heat — hit the Island of Elba on Sunday, October 18. A violent cloudburst struck the area of Cavo, causing widespread flooding in streets and buildings.

According to images released by local authorities, some cars were swept away by the current generated by the accumulation of water. The news is reported by MeteoWeb, which attributes the weather alert data to the Civil Protection Department: the news therefore currently comes from a single institutional source, that of the Department, with no further independent confirmation on the specific dynamics of the flooding in Cavo.

The Civil Protection Department issued an orange weather alert for Liguria, valid from 8 a.m. until midnight, and a yellow alert in five other regions for Sunday, October 18 and for Monday, October 19. This is a measure covering a two-day period and a number of regions beyond Tuscany alone, where Elba is located.

The extension of the alert to multiple regions, with a higher level of criticality — orange — concentrated on Liguria, indicates a meteorological phenomenon that does not end with the Elba episode but affects a broader front of the national territory. The fact that the alert covers both Sunday and the following Monday suggests that the authorities expect the unstable conditions to persist for at least two consecutive days.

At present, no information is available, in the excerpts cited, on any injuries or on an overall assessment of material damage in Cavo beyond what is visible in the images released. The episode is part of an autumn season that our newspaper has already documented several times, from the Istanbul cloudburst to the rains in Southern Italy, as characterized by high-intensity events concentrated within a few hours.

It remains to be verified, in the coming hours, whether the orange alert in Liguria will produce new flooding episodes comparable to that in Cavo, and whether the Civil Protection Department will update the picture of the regions involved for the day of Monday.