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maltatoday | SUNDAY • 31 OCTOBER 2021
EYEWITNESS
often reached characteristics
comparable to a tropical storm.
Meteorologists this time said
Italy could be facing a category
1 hurricane for the first time ev-
er, with winds of over 120km/h,
and with even more striking fea-
tures such as the presence of a
clearly visible eye around which
cloudy bodies will rotate coun-
ter-clockwise, providing excep-
tional rainfall.
Mediterranean tropical-like
cyclones, often referred to as
medicanes, but sometimes also
as Mediterranean cyclones or
as Mediterranean hurricanes,
are meteorological phenomena
occasionally observed over the
Mediterranean Sea.
On a few rare occasions,
some storms have been ob-
served reaching the strength of
a Category 1 hurricane, on the
Saffir-Simpson scale and one
storm has been recorded reach-
ing Category 2 intensity.
