Carnival (il Carnevale) is usually a cheerful festival with colorful floats and people dressing up.
| Carnival is always a cheerful and colorful festival. | Il Carnevale è sempre una festa allegra e colorata. |
But bad weather can quickly ruin the festivities.
Weather Verbs in the Past Tense
Unlike most Italian verbs, weather verbs like piovere (to rain), nevicare (to snow), and grandinare (to hail) are flexible in the passato prossimo. You can use either essere or avere — both are correct and mean the exact same thing!
Using avere:
| It hailed all afternoon and the rain ruined the float. | Ha grandinato tutto il pomeriggio e la pioggia ha rovinato il carro. |
Using essere:
| It hailed suddenly and we saw a scary lightning bolt. | È grandinato improvvisamente e abbiamo visto un fulmine spaventoso. |
Because weather verbs are impersonal (they don't have a specific subject), the past participle always ends in -o, even with essere.
This applies to all weather verbs, like piovere:
| The girls didn't dress up because it rained all day. | Le ragazze non si sono mascherate perché ha piovuto tutto il giorno. |
| Yesterday it rained, but the children wanted to dress up for Carnival. | Ieri è piovuto, ma i bambini hanno voluto mascherarsi per il Carnevale. |
Describing the Aftermath
If severe weather causes flooding (allagarsi), remember that reflexive verbs (ending in -si) always take essere in the past tense, and their past participle must agree with the subject.
| The street flooded due to the rain and the hail. | La strada si è allagata a causa della pioggia e della grandine. |