Rees Nicolas

I arrived in Turin on a dull February morning to find a city preoccupied with meteorological portents. There’d been no rain or snow since early December: a dry spell that would last 110 days all told. There were unseasonal wildfires on Monte Musinè, which had all but lost its winter coat of white, with the more distant Alps following suit. Hydrographic readings at Lago Maggiore were low for the time of year, and trending sharply downwards. Most worrying, the River Po was unusually lethargic, and there were whispers of a drought ravaging Italy’s northern breadbasket come the summer. The climate movement, however, after two years of pandemic-imposed hiatus, was beginning to revive.