A quick post for a Saturday morning, just because I believe this storm is crazy enough to warrant a photo post about its absolutely insane aftermath. Storms aren’t foreign to me, growing up in both New Orleans and Texas, I am used to nature being pretty pissed off, downright angry even. However, in Florence the worst you might get is usually just a load of annoying rain.

That was until yesterday. As I was on a blog tour with the Mercato Centrale team, exploring Picasso’s Spanish modernity at Palazzo Strozzi (post coming), at a certain point the sky darkened the galleria’s interior and the storm started. It was so loud, I actually thought it was a joke. Once we finally made it down to the center courtyard, the center was covered in hail, looking very much like a September snowfall. Once we stepped out of Palazzo Strozzi, it seemed as if a tornado had went through, hail everywhere, market stands broken, overthrown trees and bewildered tourists skirting about with colorful ponchos. You can read more about the storm in this Washington Post blog article, where they showed the radar reflectivity, apparently holes in the storm made the reflectivity so high that it maxed out the color scale, woah! I should also mention that people were injured and it is very likely that crops were damaged.

We headed to the Mercato Centrale and as people poured out, we walked into a lake of water on the floor and staff furiously cleaning up. I later heard that many major galleries were closed because of the water, including the Uffizi Gallery & Academia. Since I happened to be out and about, I snapped these photos from right after the storm, including one of Ilaria (from instagrammers firenze) & snapped by Mercato Centrale that somehow made the TG.com24 homepage! Storms like this sort of just make you say “What the Hail?!”

Check out this video from Euronews about the storm, you can barely see the Duomo cathedral in downpour!

What about you? Where were you during this ‘Perfect Storm’, comment here and let me know! Do you have pictures to share? If so, post them on my facebook page!