Once a Year 'Medicane' Could Be On For Later This Week

The Med's been having a few moments recently. Italy looking glorious, Sicily delivering, Sardinia having a right old time. In a few days time, a powerful storm is set to form, that could match the Medicane of October 2021, which caused widespread destruction in some of the Med islands.

MSW forecaster Tony Butt, breaks this swell down. “At the moment there is a large area of high pressure over Eastern Europe, extending down into the Balkans and towards Greece. On the other side of the Med, pressure is much lower over north Africa. The pressure gradient between the two is creating an easterly flow east of Sicily, which is expected to increase over the next 24 hours as a well-defined centre of low pressure develops just inland from the Libyan coast.

Forecast: Italy

Southern Italy at-a-glance. Short, sharp shot to the system.

“This system pushes northwards and moves off the coast and intensifies from early Thursday onwards. Current forecasts are showing it slow-moving south of Sicily through Thursday and Friday, with strong winds affecting Sicily, Malta and southern Italy. The storm is then forecast to weaken late Friday and early Saturday. There is some discrepancy in the models, some of which are showing it shrinking back towards Libya, while others predicting it to remain off Sicily or move north.

Related: Gallery from the last Medicane

By any stretch, that's a lot of juice out there.

“The strong easterly winds will generate a pulse of large swell for the east coast of Sicily and east and southeast exposures in southern Italy. Open-ocean wave heights off parts of Sicily on Thursday are expected to reach 20 feet. Finding somewhere with surfable conditions will be tricky, as the local winds depend on the exact trajectory of the storm.”