The current depression over central Italy which has put Rome into a state of emergency will gradually fill and move eastwards, the Meteorological Office said.

This perturbation, it said, explained the recent very strong to gale force winds the country had from the south southeast, which then veered into gale-force northwesterly winds as the low pressure centre was still passing over the central Mediterranean, followed by the current rather strong westerly wind.

This filling of low pressure was expected to bring locally moderate southwesterly winds over the weekend. The local weather was forecast to be partly to rather cloudy with highs of around 17 degrees celcius.

But by Monday morning, a low pressure system was expected to develop over the western Mediterranean which would move towards the Tyrrhenian Sea and Italy. Thereafter the weather over Malta was expected to become rather cloudy and showery with rather strong to strong winds from the south southwest veering west southwest until the evening of Wednesday.

The Malta MetOffice said it was closely monitoring the weather situation. It invited the public to refer to the MetOffice website at Maltairport.com/weather for updates of the weather forecast for the coming days.