Published on October 30, 2024 at 6:07 p.m. / Modified on October 30, 2024 at 7:45 p.m.
Isolated depression at high levelsor DANA. The acronym is repeated over and over on Spanish news channels after devastating floods which claimed the lives of at least 70 people in the south-east of the peninsula on Tuesday evening and overnight. This meteorological episode, which is more commonly called a “cold drop”, does not systematically cause disaster: it is one of the normal phenomena which affect the Mediterranean area at this time of the year. A pocket of very cold air at altitude (here between -21 and -22°C at 5000 meters altitude) collides with rather warm air rising from the Mediterranean, the temperature of which is always high at this period of the year. Result? An isolated high-altitude depression that causes sudden and extremely heavy rain.
“And these storm lines which form under these cold drops themselves tend to be almost stationary or to move very, very slowly,” explains Lionel Fontannaz, meteorologist at MétéoSuisse. This means that we can accumulate a lot of precipitation in the same region for several days. This is what we call a “Cévennes” episode. [typique des pluies qui affectent les Cévennes, ndlr] even if it is better to replace it today with a more generic term like that of a Mediterranean episode.”
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