Hail-fire

Hail-fire

A violent and sudden hailstorm tore through Florence and surrounding areas on Friday afternoon, September 19, leaving significant destruction in its wake. Lasting about ten minutes locally, the storm began off the Tuscan coast early Friday morning, with increasing intensity as it wove its way east, striking Florence about 1pm.

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Thu 11 Sep 2014 12:00 AM

A violent and sudden hailstorm tore through Florence and surrounding areas on Friday afternoon, September 19, leaving significant destruction in its wake. Lasting about ten minutes locally, the storm began off the Tuscan coast early Friday morning, with increasing intensity as it wove its way east, striking Florence about 1pm. Taking down trees and damaging buildings, the storm brought flash floods and left the streets covered in snow-like coats of hail stones.

 

At least 100 people suffered injuries in Florence alone, with 23 hospitalized at Santa Maria Nuova. The hospital, however, had to halt all but the most urgent surgeries amid the chaos: water had seeped into the building from the heavy rains, blocking elevator service and complicating standard procedures. 

 

Many of Florence’s government offices and museums closed immediately to assess damages. Florence’s Polo Museale Fiorentino association released photos from the Museum of San Marco, showing bits of broken glass on the floors, uprooted trees in the courtyard, and paintings with mud and water splattered on their plexiglass shields. Water made its way into the the Biblioteca Nazionale, the Salone dei Cinquecento in Palazzo Vecchio and parts of the Palazzo Pitti. The Uffizi reopened shortly after the storm passed, reporting no damages apart from two wet frames. Director Antonio Natali noted that several paintings shook precariously at the height of the winds, but that severe damages were avoided due to the prompt attention of gallery employees, ‘who put everything in place, helped clear the water out of the building and prepared themselves for any possibility.’

 

As the city begins to pick up the pieces post-storm, several of Florence’s attractions are staying closed until further notice, including the Boboli Gardens, the San Marco Museum and a portion of Palazzo Pitti’s Costume Gallery. The storm’s immediate economic effects also extend to the region’s winemakers: La Repubblica reported estimated damages totaling 20 million euro in Carmignano, Empoli, Vinci and beyond.

 

The greatest disaster story to emerge from the storm is the Botanic Gardens, part of Florence’s Natural History Museum and owned by the University of Florence. Ninety percent of the gardens’ priceless tree collection has been razed to the ground. Paolo Luzzi, head of the Botanic Gardens, reports in the video below (in Italian) that the ‘storm came from San Marco, released its wrath upon the garden and wreaked total devastation.’ The glass roofs of the cold and hot tropical greenhouse have suffered serious damage.

 

 

News of the storm made its way even to international outlets, with Angela Fritz, Deputy Weather Editor of the Washington Post, calling the event ‘extreme’ and adding that ‘the storm was so intense that it appears to have maxed out on [real-time online weather portal] Weather Underground’s radar reflectivity scale.’

 

At a briefing in Palazzo Vecchio shortly after the storm, mayor Dario Nardella stated that ‘Florence has never seen a hailstorm with this level of intensity…We were not expecting an event this extreme, but only knew about predictions for bad weather. We couldn’t have known that the bad weather would come in this form.’ 

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