Colonel Bernacca was actually a general, but he was still a colonel when the broadcast 'Che tempo fa' began on RAI, a highly successful broadcast that continued until the 1980s: three minutes of great empathy and great communication.
It may not be in the visual memory of the youngest, but it certainly is in the majority of their family members.
At the beginning of the summer, when I contacted the Air Force Weather Center to interview them about their great work on the weather they had told me about the event in Fivizzano which would have remembered Edmund Bernacca on the thirtieth anniversary of his death. Here, then, is the right occasion to talk again about such a beloved and popular television character.
Edmund Bernacca He was born in Rome in 1914 and in 1938 he enlisted, attending the Artillery Officers' School at the Lucania Barracks in Potenza. In the following years he was enrolled in the Royal Air Force where he immediately worked in meteorology.
As a meteorologist he also served at the Navy Hydrographic Institute of Taranto and at the School of Application of the Air Force in Florence. But his television debut took place in the 1957s, more precisely in XNUMX, when Rai called him to host, and produce, a program dedicated to weather forecasts. His fluent but unpretentious dialectic, his elegance, made him become the first popularizer of meteorology in Italy.
So, in Fivizzano, in Lunigiana, in Tuscany, the thirtieth anniversary of his death was celebrated, in the presence of his family, at the MMEB – Weather Edmondo Bernacca Museum of Fivizzano (MS). The Museum was inaugurated in 2018 and is located in a wing of the Augustinian convent, now the A. Gerini Civic Library. In addition to having a weather station, the Meteo Museum houses ancient relics and instruments, but also documents and awards of Colonel Bernacca; such as, for example, the geographical maps on which he studied, the red and blue crayons with which he indicated the hot and cold currents on the maps, the magnets with the symbols of rain and snow that he used in broadcasting, his two Telegatti and many other interesting and curious things.
The Meteo Museum is also an important place of research and teaching at the service of students from all over the world to introduce them to the basic notions of meteorology.
Colonel Bernacca also stated that the science of meteorology is a young science and for young people who can draw from it knowledge for the future of humanity. A very current topic today thinking about the climate changes we are experiencing. Colonel Bernacca, therefore, was already very advanced with his thinking, confirming his extraordinary scientific and human personality.
To complete the celebration dedicated to General Edmondo Bernacca, flight demonstrations of historic kites were held outside the MMEB, to affirm that, even if today the world is evolving and we talk about artificial intelligence for data collection and the study of phenomena, there are still tools from the past that are valid and should not be erased, such as kites. In fact, while kites are suitable for the wind, modern drones have difficulty with it.
His granddaughter Fulvia, photographer and author, concluded the meeting by presenting her book 'Sereno', dedicated to her grandfather.
“Sereno is a journey through the clouds and through time, a visual and poetic tale about the figure of the weather colonel Edmondo Bernacca… A journey, through light and intimate visions, into the history of my family and in some way of all the Italian families who for years welcomed my grandfather as one of the family.”
This is how Fulvia Bernacca describes her work, 'Serene', published by Forward Editions. The first edition is from this September 2023. The photographs are by Fulvia Bernacca and Edmondo Bernacca.
Illustrations and texts by Edmondo Bernacca. Photographic materials and maps: Archivio Famiglia Bernacca. The artistic direction is by Studio Forward with Fulvia Bernacca and the Editorial design: Erika Pino for Studio Forward.
The next presentations of Fulvia Bernacca's book will be Saturday October 7 2023 from 19:00 pm to 21:00 pm at Galleria Gallerati in via Apuania 55, in Rome, and Palermo Wednesday 25 October at 17:00 pm, at RISO – Regional Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Palermo.
