The main finding of this study is that the weather type that generally determines more perturbed
flows on the Italian peninsula (WT8) is associated with the highest impact in terms of
damage. The greatest effects were observed during autumn, when WT8 determined a deepening
of a low depression over the Gulf of Genoa with abundant rainfall in northern Italian areas.
However, other weather patterns might also have important effects with variations among seasons
and regions. In particular, this study revealed that the effects of each WT on a heterogeneous
country such as Italy differ greatly between the northern and southern regions. The
effects can even be very different between neighboring regions.
For example, in the winter period, the meteorological configurations that determined a cold
easterly or north easterly flows generated rainfall primarily in the central and southern regions
due to being the sites of contrast between cold air masses from the northern latitudes and
warmer Mediterranean air [52, 53, 54]. For this reason, central and southern regions in