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On 29 October the region inland of Valencia was hit by very extreme rainfall, causing terrible flash floods. Currently more than 150 200 people are found dead.
Citation from BBC 1 Nov:
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The plots below show analyses of MSLP and 6 hour rainfall from 27 October 00UTC to 30 October 00UTC, every 12th hour.
The plots below show analyses of T850 and z500 from 26 October to 30 October.
•The meteorological event:
–A combination of warm and moist air in the lower levels and cold air in mid-level, causing a conditional instability
–Convection triggered by the orographic lifting.
–Maintained by the lower level winds, and the vertical wind shear probably played a role.
3. Predictability
3.1 Data assimilation
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The plots below show 24-hour precipitation in observations (first plot, to be added), concatenated short forecasts (second plot) for 29 October 00UTC to 30 October 00UTC. Note that there are more observations from AEMET (add plot). For example is Chiva (447 mm) missing in the current coverage.
The plots below show 24-hour precipitation in ENS control forecasts with different lead times.
The plots below show 24-hour precipitation in DestinE 4.4km with different lead times.
The plots below show 24-hour precipitation in AIFS with different lead times.
The plots below show 24-hour precipitation in AIFS0-ENS member 1 with different lead times.
3.3 ENS
The plots below shows EFI and SOT for 1-day precipitation (29 October).
The plot below shows the forecast evolution plot for 24-hour precipitation for Chiva (split in two figures to fit all forecast types). For AIFS and AIFS-ENS, nearest gridpoint was used instead of area average due to low model resolution.
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The plots below show hit (green), misses (purple) and false alarms (cyan) of predicting precipitation above the 99th percentile of model climate, based on the ensemble median.
3.4 Monthly forecasts
The plots below show forecasts of weekly precipitation anomalies for 28 October - 3 November.
The plots below show forecasts of weekly z500 anomalies for 28 October - 3 November.
3.5 Comparison with other centres
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4. Experience from general performance/other cases
•Such events happens now and then in the Mediterranean region, compare with e.g a case from Italy in 2015 (ECMWF Newsletter 146), and Cat 2 events in Grazzini et al. classification
5. Good and bad aspects of the forecasts for the event
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•No signal beyond 1 week
•From ~23 October a wet signal relative to model climate started to appear
•From ~24 October member were sticking up far above the model climate maximum
•From ~26 October, ensemble median similar to model climate maximum
•Ensemble median around 125 mm/24h is the shortest forecasts, compared to 450 mm in the worst observation
•EcPoints top percentiles reached the magnitude of the worst observation