OREANDA-NEWS. Heavy hail on the central Italian region of Emilia-Romagna blocked traffic on the main Italian A1 motorway in the Parma area, damaging hundreds of cars and houses.

According to il Fatto Quotidiano, the hail on Monday afternoon caught motorists and local residents by surprise: according to numerous videos on social networks, apricot-sized hailstones riddled car windows and left dents on car bodies. Drivers who found themselves in the epicenter of the disaster were unable to continue driving due to wind, rain and hail.

Emergency services blocked traffic on the Milan-Napoli motorway for about three hours for the passage of equipment and rescuers. Several minor accidents were recorded.

In cities around Parma, according to la Repubblica, many buildings have lost some of the tiles. The mayor of Fidenza wrote on Facebook that a gust of wind tore off the wooden cladding of the building's roof, after which it scattered pieces of it across the historic city center.

In photographs from social networks, published by eyewitnesses, one can see that individual hailstones reach the size of an apple, almost covering the palm of an adult. The car owners who found themselves on this section of the route, alas, in most cases could not continue their journey. The hail shattered the windshields and rear windows of the car and left noticeable dents on all the metal surfaces of the cars.

Rescue services report that they have already received several hundred complaints from citizens. Several people were injured in varying degrees of severity from a tree that fell on a van parked by the side of the road. An elderly man in Villarotta di Luzzara suffered severe bruises from a window blown out by the wind. Two people were hospitalized after roof tiles collapsed.