Taranto sits in southern Italy or on one of its islands, where hot, dry Mediterranean summers give way to an autumn and winter rainy season, when warm sea-surface temperatures can fuel extremely intense, slow-moving storms known in Italy as nubifragi.
On the Ionian Sea in Apulia, the city’s flat coastal terrain depends on drainage capacity during the region’s autumn storm season. These autumn events have produced some of Italy’s most devastating floods in recent memory, and radar imagery is central to how Italy’s national civil protection system issues flash-flood alerts along this coast. Learn more: Flash Flood Warning Signs on Radar · Open the full Rain Map