Forty years ago, on January 13, 1985, a thick snow fell on Bergamo. The newspapers called it ‘the snow of the century’. The centimeters piled up: 50, 70, 90. Men bundled to the ears shoveled knee-high drifts. Cars and trains were stuck for hours. Two hundred additional civilians and a hundred soldiers from the Montelungo caserma were recruited to clear the snow. Burst pipes led to water and power shortages. Two hundred roofs gave way.
The last real snow on the plain, according to meteorologist Edoardo Ferrara, was on December 28, 2020. Temperatures have risen on the pianura Padana by one to two degrees. Snow has been rarer and rarer for the past ten years. As glaciers are lost to rising temperatures and snowfall declines, even winter is unrecognizable. La gh’è piö la niv de öna ólta, as they say in Bergamasco. It doesn’t snow like it used to.
