For the third time in less that 30 days, torrential rain during the night has brought the level of the Serchio river running through the bottom of the valley, up to worrying levels.
The river starts up in the mountains of Garfagnana and flows down the valley to the sea just past Pisa.
The authorities are keeping a careful watch on the amount of water rushing through with particular attention being paid to the Ponte di Diavalo at Borgo a Mozzano which is at the moment of writing under tremendous strain from the force of the water against its ancient structure.
Social networks and twitter were full of images late this afternoon of images showing just how much water was actually passing under the bridge.
One image even showing what looked like tourists or sightseers standing at the very top of the bridge in what must be a fairly precarious situation.
It certainly does make one think about the incredible ability of the builders of this bridge which has survived quite happily many hundreds of years. It could well be that these surges of water have been coming down the valley for millennium, in which case they were well prepared for the onslaught. Either way, the view today of the huge amount of brown surging water surging up and covering all but the main archway is impressive.
As you can see from the images and video below, further up the valley, a huge amount of water passing under the bridges is no less impressive.
Also in the video can plainly be heard, the crunching crashing sound of boulders rolling along the river bed push along by the force of the water.
Elsewhere in the Barga area, a small landslide on the Loppia road blocked traffic for a while before once again been opened to one-way traffic later on in the day.
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httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90hRBKuDNXY
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