World News for Students of English

10-09-2015 07:00

It looks like something out of a world-ending disaster movie, but this was the scene on the water around Naples in Italy on Saturday as the area was pummelled by hailstones the size of ping-pong balls. The hailstones, which were well over five centimetres in diameter, came hurtling out of the sky, smashing windows, roof tiles and car windshields, as well as leaving several people and animals injured.

According to meteorologists for weather.com, the storm was brought on by a vigorous southward plunge of a jet stream carved into Western Europe, sending a potent upper disturbance to the Italian peninsula on Saturday. That instability then charged up thunderstorms over the Mediterranean Sea which swept into Italy and caused the hailstones.

Difficult words: pummel (to hit hard and repeatedly), hailstone (a piece of frozen rain), diameter (how big something round is), hurtle (to move at fast speed), vigorous (strong), plunge (a drastic fall in amount), jet stream (very strong winds high above the ground), carve into (to be in place very strongly), potent (powerful), disturbance (when something is disturbed – when something stops a peaceful condition), peninsula (a piece of land almost completely surrounded by water).

Source: www.ondemandnews.com