Europe lashed by hail, fatal storms

[nitpicker]

https://www.dw.com/en/europe-lashed-by-hail-fatal-storms/a-49778989

Date 28.07.2019

Europe lashed by hail, fatal storms

Widespread storms and flash floods have killed three people in Italy in the wake of Europe’s heat wave. Meanwhile, hail has wiped out crops in Italy and Austria.

Three people died in severe weather in Italy at teh weekend, including an alpine runner. Lightning stuck as the 45-year-old Norwegian was running in an ultra-marathon high in Italy's Dolomite Mountains on Saturday, reported Italian media. She died later from severe injuries.

A mini-tornado killed a woman motorist near Rome's Fiumicino airport. Winds lifted the 26-year-old's car and smashed it against a railing early Sunday.

Flash-flooding near Arezzo, south of Florence in Tuscany, caught a 70-year-old man. His car was found by emergency services in a mud-filled canal.

Worst hit by hail was the Arezzo region. Italy's main agricultural body, Coldiretti, said orchards, whole fields of tobacco, sunflowers and maize as well as greenhouses had been wrecked, leaving losses worth millions of euros.

Austria's APA news agency, citing hail insurers, said airborne ice clumps as big as tennis balls pummeled the provinces of Styria, Carinthia and Burgenland. Losses in cereals, vegetables and to winegrowers also ran into the millions.

Worst-affected on Saturday, said ORF public television was Styria, where rainfalls flooded roads and filled householders' cellars.

Tirol was left coping with mud and stone landslides.
(snip)

[bucolic_frolic]

1. The financial effects of climate change on property and economies

do worry me. It's a reason to downsize, assess for risk of storms, floods, heat, earthquakes.

But economies ... food could get scarce. Political strife.

[Martin Eden]

3. But we "can't afford" to do anything about it.

So called "conservatives" are the real plague.

[Roy Rolling]

2. The New Normal

Climate change won’t pass over the gated communities of Republicans worshiping Trump.