Uncommon ‘roll clouds’ spotted in Portugal amid intense heatwave, with a person killed by a sudden downpour in Italy during extreme weather in Europe

Europe has been shaken by rare and unstable weather phenomena as the fatal heatwave continues to bring chaos and disruption to the continent.

Towering roll clouds loomed over beaches in Portugal as temperatures edged past 40C this week.

‘The most frightening thing was the wind and everything becoming dark,’ one swimmer told online media outlet ZAP.

‘It was very strange. We all started packing up our things and running. It looked like a tsunami.

The cloud was reported by the national meteorological agency to have been blown towards the coast on Monday, affecting those on beaches in northern and central Portugal.

Roll clouds are formed from the interaction of air masses with different temperatures and sea breezes. 

Sweltering heat has brought unstable weather phenomena to Portugal in recent days, including violent storms, hail and freak showers of rain.

In Mora, Portugal, a new record high temperature for June was reached on Sunday, with the mercury soaring to a scorching 46.6C. Meanwhile, firefighters worked tirelessly to combat wildfires that raged overnight.

Intense flooding brought on by heavy rains in northern Italy, meanwhile, killed a person on Monday as thunderstorms crashed nearby.

Tragically, in the alpine town of Bardonecchia, Piedmont, a 70-year-old man identified as greengrocer Franco Chiaffrini was struck by a deluge of water and mud.

Witnesses said he was dragged away for the current and went missing for several hours before firefighters recovered his body some 400 metres away.

‘Today a water bomb hit the town of Bardonecchia suddenly, causing damage and unfortunately a victim,’ said the president of the region, Alberto Cirio.

Authorities nationwide were also stretched to deal with wildfires, landslides, the aftermath of violent storms and an earthquake in the blistering heat.

Britain, meanwhile, was forecast to see temperatures as high as 36C today, after Monday saw the hottest start to Wimbledon on record and a peak of 33.1C in London.

Commuters in the capital faced travel chaos this morning after a fire alert at South Kensington station, which saw the Circle line completely suspended and the District and Hammersmith & City lines both part-suspended. A driver on one Tube train told passengers in an announcement that the fire was likely caused by the heat.

Italy

A man in northwestern Italy was killed Monday in a flash flood caused by heavy rains, the authorities announced.

The 70-year-old man was hit by a torrent of water and mud after he got out of his van in the alpine town of Bardonecchia in the region of Piedmont, located some 90 kilometres (56 miles) west of Turin near the French border.

‘We are increasingly faced with emergency situations due to weather events that we used to call exceptional but are now more and more frequent,’ said the president of the region, Alberto Cirio, on social media

The town’s mayor had warned residents in the afternoon not to leave their homes or approach bridges, as sudden bad weather caused the Frejus waterway to break its banks.

Video showed churning black water rushing down the waterway, sending up plumes of water and mud over its banks.

Local media identified the man as a 70-year-old resident of Bardonecchia, a resort town which hosted snowboarding events during the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin.

Firefighters rescued at least 10 people trapped by the waters, as well as a handful stuck in their cars, media reported.

Separately, authorities were investigating whether soaring temperatures in the north of the country had caused a giant sign atop a 192m structure in Milan to collapse on Monday.

A sign on top of the Generali building appeared to slump into the roof and was at risk of crashing to the ground, firefighters said.

Generali said that the possible causes of the incident were being assessed. One hypothesis is that the steel beams holding up the sign broke.

In Bologna, a 47-year-old man was reported to have died in the heat after falling ill on a building sight. 

Authorities also warned that rising temperatures were now bringing more venomous invasive species to coastal waters around tourist destinations in the Mediterranean.

The Italian Institute for Environmental Protection and Research (ISPRA) urged tourists and fishermen to report sightings of four ‘potentially dangerous’ species this week, citing nearly two thousand recorded appearances in the region.

The lionfish, silver-cheeked toadfish, dusky spinefoot and marbled spinefoot are beginning to appear in waters off southern Italy as the Mediterranean warms, it said.

The Ionian Sea is now one of the most vulnerable areas to lionfish, which carry spines causing ‘extremely painful strings’. The silver-cheeked toadfish contains a highly toxic neurotoxin and wields powerful teeth ‘capable of inflicting serious bites’.

On mainland Italy, a few regions were planning to ban some outdoor work activities during the hottest hours of the day in response to the record-high temperatures.

Authorities in Naples were dealing with wildfires and an earthquake as temperatures soared on Monday.

Images posted by local media showed people running into the sea at a beach resort in Baia Domizia near Naples as flames tore through pinewoods behind them.

‘I have never experienced anything like this, we were surrounded by flames at least thirty meters high, smoke everywhere,’ the mayor of nearby Cellole, Guido di Leone, wrote on Facebook.

The 4.6 magnitude earthquake in central Italy was the most violent in the last 40 years, according to Italian news agency ANSA. Trains in the region, including Naples’ subway, were suspended. 

Local media also reported that a violent thunderstorm in Valle D’Aosta had caused two landslides to obstruct a road to Cogne.

Fire services were called out to rescue a car trapped by the debris. 

Rail traffic between Paris and Milan is expected to be disrupted for ‘at least several days’, the SNCF told AFP on Tuesday, following violent thunderstorms around Modane in the Maurienne valley in Savoie.

France

Temperatures were expected to reach highs of 41C in France today, with the highest extreme heat warning in place in 16 departments across the country.

Operators of the Eiffel Tower shut the summit of the 1,083-feet high landmark on Monday and said it would remain closed on Tuesday and Wednesday ‘due to the current heatwave’. 

Across the Ile-de-France region which includes Paris, police said all but the least polluting vehicles would be banned from the roads from 0330 GMT to 2200 GMT because of high ozone pollution levels.

Speed limits of 20 kilometres (12.5 miles) per hour would also remain in some places.

Warnings were issued for young children, older people and those with chronic illnesses.

‘Heatwaves are deadly,’ said Akshay Deoras, a research scientist at the National Centre for Atmospheric Science and Department of Meteorology at the University of Reading, west of London.

‘We need to treat extreme heat with the same seriousness we give to dangerous storms.’

Across France, the government said it expected nearly 1,350 schools to be partially or completely shut – nearly double the number on Monday – with teachers complaining that overheated and unventilated classrooms were making students unwell. 

Agnes Pannier-Runacher, France’s ecology transition minister, warned, in comments to Sud Radio, that there could be 44 million people nationwide trapped in urban ‘heat islands’, where the temperature could be as much as 4 or 5C higher.

The heat island effect means built-up areas are often much hotter than nearby rural areas due to human-made surfaces that absorb the heat, like buildings and roads.

Densely populated city areas can be as much as 12C warmer than the surrounding countryside.

Dr Radhika Khosla, Associate Professor at the Smith School of Enterprise and Environment, University of Oxford, said: ‘Populations in urban areas like London are particularly susceptible to extreme heat as the concrete and asphalt absorb and re-emit the sun’s radiation, amplifying its impact on our bodies.

‘For this reason, outdoor workers are particularly at risk and should take regular breaks to hydrate in the shade.’

Portugal 

Portugal will see limited respite on Tuesday, after two days on red alert in several regions, including Lisbon.

But temperatures were still expected to reach 40C in the central city of Castel Branco, Beja and Evora in the south, and 34C in the capital. 

The national meteorological agency IPMA said those on the beaches in northern and central Portugal would have seen a rare ‘roll cloud’ blown towards the coast on Monday.

Images shared on social networks showed a huge horizontal cloud heading from the horizon towards the shore, accompanied by a violent gust of wind when it reached land.

While temperatures were expected to fall slightly, the risk of forest fires remains high in a number of Portuguese regions. 

On Monday night, some 250 firefighters were tackling a blaze in the southern Aljustrel area. 

Spain 

Highs in the mid-40s were expected in Spain, after the country recorded its hottest June day on record at the weekend.

Sunday’s national average of 28C set a new high temperature for June 29 since records were started in 1950, PA reports.

A new June heat record of 46C was also recorded in El Granado, in the Andalucían province of Huelva on Saturday, the BBC reported.

Spain’s national weather service said no relief from the first heat wave of the year is expected until Thursday. 

As temperatures in the country’s arid south soared, passengers were left stranded in train carriages after a power cable failure cut high-speed lines between Madrid and Andalucía.

The state-owned railway infrastructure operator, ADIF, called on regional emergency services to service and evacuate stranded passengers, some of whom spent hours stuck inside the trains as a blistering heatwave scorches the country.

The cause of the malfunction was unknown and ADIF has since postponed the resumption of service four times. 

A 51-year-old woman died on Saturday night in Barcelona in the midst of the heatwave.

Montse Aguilar had felt unwell throughout the day and returned home from work as a street cleaner before tragically dying, her family said, as reported by El Pais. 

In a message sent to a friend she had said that she ‘thought I was going to die’, citing pains in her arms, chest, and neck.

Family members shared their anger towards the contractor that provides cleaning services in Barcelona’s historic centre.

The director of cleaning and waste collection services, Carlos Vázquez, said that there was no negligence and the City Council would not open an investigation.

An autopsy is expected to confirm Ms Aguilar’s cause of death. The family believe she died from heat exhaustion and expect to file a complaint, El Pais reports.

Ms Aguilar lived in Poblesec with her 85-year-old mother, whom she cared for. She was a choir singer.

Germany

In Germany, temperatures are expected to edge towards 40C, rising from nearly 35C on Monday.

Temperatures in southern Germany were forecast as high as 39 C (102F) on Wednesday. 

Some towns and regions imposed limits on how much water can be taken from rivers and lakes. 

The heatwave has already lowered water levels on the Rhine, hampering shipping and raising freight costs for cargo owners, affecting international trade.

At the chokepoint of Kaub, cargo vessels could only sail about 50% full, at Duisburg and Cologne between 40-50% full. 

Greece 

To the east, Greece and Turkey have also been hit hard by wildfires, causing chaos for tourists as hundreds of passengers were left stranded.

Greece has issued a ‘very high’ fire alert for six major regions amid the extreme heatwave. 

On the island of Karpathos, with a heat weather warning in place, a search operation was launched after a British holidaymaker did not return to his rented accommodation.

The man was last seen by the owner of the accommodation on Friday, June 27, a police source said.

The Foreign Office said it was supporting the family of a man missing in Greece, and in contact with the local authorities.

Switzerland

Not even Switzerland was immune from the heat, with the Alps reporting record-breaking temperatures.

It was the first time that the entire Alpine range had seen temperatures above 0C in June.

Snow loss continues to threaten glaciers, the communities underneath them and ski resorts across Europe.