Irish man holidaying in Italy says 'powerful and violent' hailstones 'fell like rocks'  

The size of some of the hailstones which fell on some of Italy's northern regions earlier this week. Picture: Carlow Weather/ Twitter

An Irish man holidaying in Italy says “powerful and violent” hailstones “fell like rocks” during an unexpected storm which destroyed cars and devastated locals in Lake Garda.

Carlow man Jim Dunne was out for dinner with his wife Amanda in the picturesque town of Pescheria when the storm struck, and they had to take cover.

“When the first one came down, I thought a glass was after falling off a table and breaking,” Jim said.

"It hit just outside the bar on a little terrace where we were sitting just before hand.

It was unreal, it went on for about 15 minutes, massive, massive chunks of ice were falling with such force, the noise of them was unbelievable.

“It was so violent in terms of how powerful these things were coming down. They were exploding on the ground. It was mad,” he said.

When the couple arrived back at their hotel, windows at the property were also broken and chairs on their balcony had been shattered. Picture: Jim Dunne

According to Mr Dunne, locals are normally able to track storms, but this one was different, he said.

“These were like rocks falling. It was so unexpected. In the space of about 10 minutes, I’d say 10 ambulances went by with sirens blaring.” 

The 52-year-old Rathvilly native said the hailstone shower lasted about 15 minutes but did severe damage in that time.

As we were walking back to our hotel that night, there was a lot of commotion. There were trees down, leaves everywhere, roadblocks, and the cars on the side of the road all had their windscreens broken.

“There were also people out working with chainsaws trying to clear the road. The locals were distraught out surveying the damage,” he said.

When the couple arrived back at their hotel, windows at the property were also broken and chairs on their balcony had been shattered.

“The hailstones came straight down through hard plastic chairs.

“My wife picked one up and it was the size of her hand. But there were reportedly even bigger ones, and you could see by the size of the dents in cars that that was true,” Mr Dunne said.

According to Mr Dunne 'every single car around our hotel, all had their windscreens smashed, probably 30 or 40 cars'. Picture: Jim Dunne

According to Mr Dunne “every single car around our hotel, all had their windscreens smashed, probably 30 or 40 cars.” “It was like someone took a hammer to them, or gunshot holes, that’s how bad they were,” he said.

The couple came away from the event unscathed but said that timing was everything.

“Imagine if we had decided to go back to the hotel earlier and got caught in that, we’d have been seriously injured, this was not like your normal Irish hailstorm,” Mr Dunne said.

The couple did, however, hear reports of people getting injured in a campsite between Pescheria and Sirmione.

“It has tents, chalets, pods and that sort of thing, it must have been so frightening up there,” Mr Dunne said.

Italy has been grappling with extreme weather in recent weeks, with the southern half of the country baking in temperatures of up to 44C, and thunderstorms, hail, and winds of up to 100km/h pummelling the country's northern regions.

Local authorities in the regions of Lombardy and Veneto advised people to stay away from public parks due to the risk of falling branches and trees being uprooted due to storms, and several popular tourist sites have also been closed to the public entirely.

“Further down south, in Sardinia and those places, they are on fire. It’s crazy stuff.

“I couldn’t understand how we were experiencing hailstones in such warm weather, but obviously there’s science behind that,” Mr Dunne said.