New app to warn residents of Piedmont and Liguria about upcoming storms

This comes after a particularly tense month of July, which saw heavy hailstorms in these regions

July was not particularly pleasant for residents and farmers of Piedmont and Liguria after several heavy hailstorms hit these Italian regions throughout the month. Authorities, however, are showing a willingness to quickly respond and adapt to these unfavourable circumstances.

Piedmont’s government website informed that a new app, called Livestorm, is now available to users. Its purpose is to warn about upcoming storms within a radius of 20 kilometres giving people a chance to prepare accordingly.

‘Never again caught by surprise’

The month of July this year was considered to have been the second-worst in terms of storms, only bested by that of 2016. This indicates worsening impacts of the climate change phenomena, which even if irregular, cannot be denied. Reference check? Think about the unseen destruction that floods caused in Germany and Belgium.

It is this irregular nature of natural disasters that make them even more fearful. That is why Livestorm is there to offer some help in giving people a heads up so they can seek shelter or protect their property in the case of an upcoming severe storm. Somewhat logically, its motto is: ‘Never caught again by surprise’.

"This is an effective and free tool – Livestorm - an app, developed by Arpa Piemonte in collaboration with Arpa Liguria (regional environmental agencies) that warns not only when a strong storm is about to arrive, through a notification using the radar meteorological observations, but also what its direction and intensity are. The red circle indicates that the arrival of hail is very likely,” explained Matteo Marnati, the Piedmont councillor for the Environment.

The app allows you to request notifications for one’s current position or for other places, receiving alerts relating to the coming storm within a radius of 5, 10 or 20 km. It is possible to view the radar maps in real-time, observing the areas affected by the phenomena. Livestorm provides an update every 5 minutes with a movement forecast for the next hour.

It is possible to identify storm phenomena and classify them through a severity index thanks to a meteorological radar located on a hill above Turin and managed by Arpa Piemonte. This is combined with data from another radar on the Ligurian Apennines (on Monte Settepani) managed jointly between the two Regions.