EUMeTrain: Case Study on abundant rainfall over Southern Spain

Authors

ZAMG
Jarno Schipper
AEMET
Ramón Vazquez

Introduction

The first week of October 2007 proved to be devastating for Southern Spain when torrential rainfall caused floods and considerable damage.

The meteorological background to this case is rather classical with a persistent cyclone over the Atlantic and a frontal system over the Iberian Peninsula. Especially in the upper layers of the atmosphere the cyclone over the Atlantic causes a continuous flow of warm humid air in the direction of Spain. In the lower layers in the beginning of the case a frontal zone is recognized over Central Spain. The NWP will later show us the unstable character of this system. Within this frontal zone already at the beginning convective cells are seen embedded. Occasionally the development of so-called V-shape storms indicate how fierce the convection is at these areas. In the small movie below the aftermath of the severe rainfall can be seen in Southern Spain.



In this case study the usual set of satellite images in combination with NWP will be discussed. A new addition comes from Meteo Alarm and also some additional information from the NWC SAF is taken into account and presented.

Beside the weather activities over the Iberian mainland on 2nd and 3rd of October this case also presents an extra chapter on the weather over the Baleares where on the 4th October a F2 tornado was reported that in combination with the large hail also caused some considerable damage.

The aim of this case study is to:


To be able to follow the case study from the beginning it is preferable to study the chapter dealing with convective weather features from the "Manual of Synoptic Satellite Meteorology".