MARSALA, SICILY — On Friday morning, at roughly the hour most of Marsala was still deciding between espresso and the second espresso, two tornadoes touched down in the same place at the same time, an event meteorologists describe as rare and Sicilians describe as about in character.
The twister pair tore through Marsala and neighboring Petrosino in western Sicily, overturning cars, damaging a school where 273 children were inside, and injuring dozens of people, two of them seriously. Everyone is asking how this happened in a town whose principal weather tradition is being hot.
The honest answer involves a summer heat wave, a cold front, and the Mediterranean behaving like a kettle left on. The regional answer involves the word “unprecedented,” which experts used almost unanimously, which is the way scientists say “it has happened before, just not since my PhD.”
What is remarkable is the local tone. The town of Marsala produces something like a fifth of the world’s Marsala wine, has been conquered by Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Normans, Spanish, and Italian tax auditors, and regards a tornado the way a retired boxer regards a new gym member.
“A twister, yes, okay,” said Calogero Amato, 71, who watched the second funnel from his balcony while holding a coffee he did not put down. “My family has been on this exact street since 1802. The tornado is the guest. We are the house. Do you understand? The house does not panic.”
The Alcide De Gasperi school complex took the direct hit, and the region’s response was the quick, boring kind that saves lives: the building had been partly emptied for maintenance, the children were accounted for, and by afternoon the town was doing what towns do, which is moving furniture and complaining about the prefecture.
MARSALA: WEATHER RESUME
- Normal extremes: 45°C summers, winds that steal shutters, and one volcanic mountain kept as a hobby.
- Friday's event: Twin landspouts, one rated as the strongest ever recorded in the region.
- Cars overturned: Several, including, per local consensus, at least two that "needed it."
- School evacuation time: Fast enough that the Italian internet spent the weekend complimenting Italian schools, a historic event in its own right.
- Wine impact: Minimal. The vines, witnesses say, "did not move."
Climate scientists note that a warming Mediterranean loads the weather dice, and that Friday’s twin funnel is exactly the kind of roll that gets more likely. The towns of western Sicily note that they have been rolling loaded dice since the Greeks, and that the wine is still very good.
At press time, the second funnel’s path had been marked with a small stone plaque by the municipality, next to a parking sign, because Sicily memorializes everything except the thing that just happened, and then memorializes it, eventually, with a plaque.