Virtu Ferries passengers travelling between Malta and Sicily were forced to alter their plans or face being stranded on Monday after the operator changed its ferry schedule due to bad weather.
The Malta-Sicily ferry operator cancelled a 6.30pm route from Malta to Pozzallo and a 9.30pm trip from the Sicilian port to Malta.
As of Monday afternoon, the operator had scheduled extra crossings for Tuesday to make up for the Monday cancellations.
Ferries will now also depart Pozzallo at 8am and Malta at 12pm on Tuesday, in addition to standard departures at 9.30pm and 5am respectively.
Those travelling over the weekend also experienced alterations to their scheduled trips, including significantly earlier crossings and, for some, a delay of ten hours.
On Saturday, the departure from Pozzallo was brought forward more than 12 hours, departing at 8am instead of 9.30pm, while on Sunday the scheduled crossing from Malta was delayed from 6.30am to 4.30pm.
The change in schedules is the result of weather forecasts that predict strong and gusty winds on Monday evening - and which forced four flights heading to Malta to be diverted to Sicily.
A spokesperson for the airport's Meteorological Office told Times of Malta that it would be issuing a strong wind warning on Monday afternoon.
“Presently there is a low-pressure system to the south of Malta, which caused the unstable weather and the dust in the air we experienced this morning. The low pressure will track northwards and by evening will be over southern Italy,” they said.
“This will cause the wind to back to a strong West-Northwest direction, with the weather expected to become unstable again as a cold front passes over the Maltese Islands this afternoon.”
Winds are expected to die down by Wednesday.
Despite the recent downpours, this May has not been an especially wet one, the Met office confirmed.
With 6.2mm recorded so far, this May sits below the average expected rainfall of 10.2mm for the month, while the average wind speed of 10.1 knots is “mostly in line” with the 30-year average, the spokesperson said.
The wettest May on record was in 1993 with 31 mm of rainfall recorded.