Messina 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 strait separating Sicily from the mainland, the city’s steep hillside terrain has a history of deadly flash floods and landslides, including a catastrophic 2009 event. 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