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The heat has a name, and it comes from Africa
Italian summers are named. A prolonged heatwave is an anticiclone, and the Italian meteorological service gives each one a title — often drawn from classical mythology, so newspapers report the arrival of Caronte, Lucifero or Minosse as though a character were coming to town. It is half joke and half warning: Rome regularly passes forty degrees in July and August, and the combination of heat and emptied-out August cities is genuinely punishing. The other wind with a name is the scirocco, which blows up from the Sahara and can leave a film of red dust on cars from Sicily to Milan. Italy's climate varies more than its size suggests. The Alps have a full ski season, the Po valley is foggy and cold in winter and humid in summer, and Sicily is close to North African. Romans regard their own winter as mild and complain about it constantly. Two practical notes: central heating in many buildings is switched on and off by municipal date rather than by temperature, and air conditioning is less universal than visitors expect, being widely suspected of causing the colpo d'aria from Lesson 13.