Po rises one metre in 24 hours amid torrential rain
(ANSA) – Rome, October 24 – Unrelenting rain in northern Italy has caused the country’s longest river, the Po, to rise one metre over the course of 24 hours, agriculture association Coldiretti reported on Thursday.
The Po flows from west to east across almost the entire width of northern Italy, and was measured at the Becca Bridge, located in the province of Pavia, south of Milan.
Storms pummelled Tuscany once more, after causing one death, flooding, evacuations and several rescues earlier this week.
The area between Florence and Siena were hit particularly hard.
Fire brigade divers rescued a woman in a rural Tuscany near the city of Grosseto who was trapped in her water-filled car.
An elderly couple was stranded in their home when a high voltage power line fell across a road. Firefighters in an amphibious vehicle came to the rescue of a number of janitors stuck in a flooded school the rural Tuscan town of Volterra.
Volterra’s mayor closed schools in two nearby villages.
In the coastal city of Livorno, an intense downpour between 4:30 and 5:15 Thursday morning unleashed 21.6 mm of rain in 10 minutes.
Cornices and roof tiles were ripped away in gusts of up to 65 km per hour.
Coldiretti said extreme weather influenced by climate change has caused damages of roughly one billion euros to agriculture so far in Italy this year.
The farmers’ association also pointed out that five million Italians live in unstable hydrogeological zones, at risk of flooding or landslides.