Watch Cyclone Harry storm surge crash into restaurant
CCTV video captured a storm surge flooding an Italian restaurant’s dining room.
A hurricane-like storm ravaged parts of southern Italy this week, prompting evacuations as businesses, roads and other infrastructure were severely damaged.
The storm, Cyclone Harry, brought heavy rain, strong winds and storm surges to Sicily, Sardinia and Calabria starting on Monday, Jan. 19. Cyclone Harry continued to hit the region on Tuesday, Jan. 20, as seen in a video capturing the storm surge engulfing the dining room of Andrew’s Ristorante, a Mediterranean seaside restaurant located in Catania on the east coast of Sicily, just south of the Italian peninsula.
A surge of water invades the dining room – flowing under glass windows, which appear to be designed for that function – and as the water floods the restaurant, tables and chairs are propelled. The crashing of glasses and tableware can be heard.
Cyclone Harry brings winds of up to 90 mph and 30-foot waves
Local authorities said the storm – called a medicane, or a Mediterranean hurricane – was the most powerful in the past six decades, producing winds of up to 150 kilometers per hour (about 90 mph) and waves up to 10 meters tall (more than 32 feet), reported news site Italianismo. Water began to recede early Wednesday, Jan. 21, on the Sicilian coast, the site reported.
To the west across the Tyrrhenian Sea, flooding in Sardinia from the storm is expected to result in damage costs in the hundreds of millions of euros, Sardinia Governor Alessandra Todde estimated, according to Euronews. (Each euro is equal to $1.18, so 200 million Euros would equal more than $236 million.)
Across Sicily, the damage is already estimated at half a billion euros, said Sicilian President Renato Schifani, who had called regional and central government officials to declare a national emergency, according to Nova News, a daily politics and economics newsletter headquartered in Rome.
Sicily recorded the highest number of incidents with more than 1,013 interventions by first responders, Reuters reported.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said Friday, Jan. 23, in a post on X that the country’s Council of Ministers would meet on Monday, Jan. 26, to discuss a state of emergency declaration for the regions.
In Meloni’s post, she also thanked the departments and local agencies that helped respond following the storm, which she confirmed did cause casualties.
The storm also brought flooding and damage elsewhere in the Mediterranean, including to Catalonia, Corsica and Malta, Euronews reported. Flooding in southern Spain was also attributed to Cyclone Harry, according to the Interesting Engineering site, which collected storm video from across the Mediterranean over the last several days.
Mike Snider is a national trending news reporter for USA TODAY. You can follow him on Threads, Bluesky, X and email him at mikegsnider & @mikegsnider.bsky.social & @mikesnider & msnider@usatoday.com.
Dining and Cooking