Interior defends the restrictions due to the rain despite the inaccuracy in the forecasts
The Meteocat says that the storms have ended up moving faster than the initial models indicated
BarcelonaOnce again, the disparity between weather forecasts and the final outcome of the storm has reopened the debate this Wednesday regarding the Civil Protection alert system. The heavy rains initially depicted by the models, which led the Government to close schools and ask for mobility to be limited in Alt and Baix Penedès, Garraf, Baix Llobregat, and Vallès Occidental, did not end up occurring, and the executive ended up lifting the alert at midday. A scenario that has raised some criticism and has led the Minister of the Interior, Núria Parlon, to defend the management of the Catalan executive.
In a press conference, the minister argued that the prevention and protection warnings regarding the intense rains of the last few hours were "accurate." Parlon explained that there is a technical committee, the CECAT, of which Meteocat is a part, which on Tuesday afternoon warned of a situation of instability and a high risk of intense and torrential rains in these five regions. For this reason, she defended that the executive's action was justified by the technical information available at that time. "Our obligation as a public administration is to protect the citizenry. And that is what we have done during this episode," she concluded.
Also, the deputy director of Civil Protection, Imma Solé, and the head of forecasting at the Meteorological Service of Catalonia (Meteocat), Santi Segalà, appeared to take stock of the rain episode. Solé admitted that the storm was not as strong as expected, but justified the measures by the fact that prediction models "always bring uncertainty" but must be translated into "real" decisions on the territory. She also remarked that there was a "high probability" of rain this Wednesday.
Faced with criticism for the excess of caution, Segalà explained that the storms ended up moving faster than it seemed at first and that all prediction models have these margins of error "here and everywhere in the world." For his part, the head of intervention for the Generalitat Firefighters, José Luis López, explained that the fire brigade was also "prepared for the worst-case scenario," although there were no major incidents afterwards. Finally, between 6 in the morning and 12 at noon, the 112 emergency number received about 200 calls related to the rains, of which 50 resulted in interventions by the Firefighters, none of them serious.
In fact, the only major incident that has been registered and has caused serious delays has been the cutting of the high-speed railway corridor between Barcelona and Madrid due to a lightning strike, which has caused delays and forced the service to be completely cut off for several hours. There have also been about thirty cancellations at El Prat airport.
Little precision to know where the downpours will fall
The forecast initially pointed to an especially complicated episode of storms and downpours on the central coast and pre-coastal areas during the morning, but the precipitation ended up evolving in a more irregular way. In situations like this, typical of the Mediterranean at the end of summer—with a lot of atmospheric instability after an episode of very intense heat—models can anticipate the potential for rain well, but they have more difficulty determining with precision where the most intense downpours will concentrate. Storms are localized and irregular phenomena that can move or reorganize in a few hours, so an area that started with a high warning may end up receiving less precipitation than expected, as has happened in this case.
Throughout the morning, the focus of most stormy activity moved rapidly towards other sectors in the north of the country. This explains why regions like the Ripollès, Berguedà, or Garrotxa ended up suffering downpours and extreme weather phenomena more significant than what initially seemed likely, while in part of the central coast and pre-coastal areas the intense rain was ultimately more local and concentrated at the beginning of the morning. For example, by midday, in the area with a red alert, water quantities in a short time had been recorded of about 50 l/m² in Sitges, 21 in Cunit (Baix Penedès), or 17 in Terrassa (Vallès Occidental) and Vilafranca del Penedès (Alt Penedès). Therefore, most records had initially remained well below those reached in other zones until then, such as the 62 l/m² in la Quar (Berguedà), the more than 50 in Sant Joan de les Abadesses (Ripollès), or the more than 40 in Olot (Garrotxa).
Paradoxically, in the afternoon, when the alert for downpours was lower on the central coast and pre-coastal areas, storms formed in this area that left heavy downpours, especially in the Barcelona area, where locally more than 40 or 50 l/m² were exceeded. It has also been raining in the north of the country, where throughout the day some local accumulations close to 100 l/m² have been recorded, especially in the Ripollès.
Weather warnings, therefore, do not indicate that it will rain with the same intensity throughout an entire region or area, but rather point out the areas where, according to weather models, there is a higher risk of very intense precipitation or other adverse phenomena occurring within a specific time frame. Meteorology is not an exact science, and in situations of irregular torrential downpours at the end of summer, it is more difficult to specify exactly where the most significant ones will fall, as reports Xavi Segura.