Yellow alert does not mean that there will be little rain. Or that there is no risk of damage. After years of “colored” bulletins from the Civil Protection, there is still a lot of confusion about the meaning of the warnings issued in view of disturbances that hit Sardinia. The message has now gotten through: yellow? Okay, not much. Red: danger. But that’s not the case. Or not entirely the case.
Daniela Pani, from the forecasting and risk service of the Sardinian Civil Protection, explained how the alert system works on the island, interviewed by Simona De Francisci at Strambata, on Radiolina.
“Yellow code means alert,” he begins, “we receive the information that we receive daily from meteorologists, we collect it and we do not make weather forecasts: we project it onto the territory of Sardinia to understand what effects can be generated by the expected weather conditions and we express them through a color code: green, yellow orange and red.”
The territorial framework is constantly monitored "thanks to many "lit eyes"", continues Pani, "which are the sensors that measure the rain, the levels of the rivers, the temperatures and the humidity of the soil, very important. And on the basis of the data received I can know what could happen in a certain area. And we outline scenarios for the entire island territory".
But what does yellow alert mean? With this risk scenario, "erosion, landslides, rapid flows, runoff, rising levels of even small watercourses, surface water flow, falling rocks, flooding may occur." And the yellow storm "may involve heavy rainfall. And it may be characterized by high forecast uncertainty: it may be accompanied by hail, gusts and wind."
To understand: for the storm of the night between Saturday and Sunday the alert was yellow for all of Sardinia except for Gallura.
(Online Union)