A Tornado in Puglia, a Cold Snap, and a Weakening Polar Vortex

Closed-circuit cameras at a beach resort restaurant in Castellaneta Marina, on Italy's southern coast, recorded the moment a tornado tore through the building, Al Jazeera reported on Monday, publishing the footage. The channel's account gave no casualty figures. The resort sits on the Gulf of Taranto, in Puglia, a stretch of coast where autumn storms coming off the Ionian Sea are a known hazard.

The same day brought a broader warning. The Local Italy reported that temperatures were set to fall below seasonal averages across the country this week, with heavy rainfall and strong winds expected in the centre-south on Monday, and its daily news roundup led on storm alerts for southern Italy. Neither report named Sardinia.

The cold turn has an origin well above the weather. According to the Guardian, the stratospheric polar vortex over the northern hemisphere faces the prospect of an unusually early weakening, and forecast models suggest it could weaken significantly over the next 10 days. Disruption to the winds above the Arctic threatens to alter weather patterns across parts of the continent in the coming weeks, the paper reports, without committing to where the effects would fall hardest.