A Tornado on the Puglia Coast, and a Cold Snap Over the South

Surveillance footage published by Al Jazeera on Monday evening showed a tornado tearing through a beach restaurant at Castellaneta Marina, on the Ionian coast of Puglia. The clip, carried in the network's video newsfeed, captured the moment the structure was struck. The report gave no casualty figures and no estimate of damage, and Castellaneta Marina in November is well outside its season.

The same day, The Local reported that temperatures across Italy would fall below seasonal averages this week, with heavy rain and strong winds expected in the centre-south on Monday. Its morning roundup listed storm alerts for southern Italy. Read together, the two items show one disturbance from two angles: the moment of impact, and the warning issued before it.

The Guardian reported on Monday that the stratospheric polar vortex over the northern hemisphere faces an unusually early weakening, with forecast models suggesting it could weaken significantly over the next 10 days and threaten to alter weather patterns across parts of Europe. The paper did not tie that weakening to this week's Italian storms, and neither does this dispatch.