“Medicane : Understand The Hurricanelike Storm That Hit Libya, Causing Thousands Of Casualties G1

The extratropical cyclone that struck Libya is known as Medicane

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) explains that the extreme weather phenomenon that hit Libya is a result of a “storm system” which began in Europe, crossed the Mediterranean and arrived with concentrated force in the North African country. Due to its characteristics, the event that killed thousands of people is known as “Medicine”one Mediterranean hurricane.

Understand the chronology of the climate event in 9 points:

The phenomenon was called “Storm Daniel“, because it was originally developed in Greece and was named after the Greek National Meteorological Service.

At GreeceThe first death Because of the extreme rain it was on the 5th.

Already at this point the authorities declared that the storm was the “largest extreme phenomenon measured in terms of the amount of rain in 24 hours” since Greece began recording.

In Greece, after five days of storms, 15 deaths were caused by floods. Greece recorded points with 750 millimeters of rain in 24 hours.

The storm system also hit Turkey and Bulgaria.

According to the WMO, the storm that hit Europe took on the properties of a drug as it moved towards Libya.

In Libya, the storm peaked in the northeast on the 10th strong winds of 70 to 80 km/h.

Also in Libya, torrential rains of up to 240 mm caused flooding in several cities, including AlBayda, where flooding occurred 414.1 mm in 24 hours (from 8 a.m. on the 10th to 8 a.m. on the 11th), a record number according to the National Meteorological Center.

Entire districts of the city of Derna then disappearedTwo old dams collapsedaccording to the Libyan Meteorological Service.

“As the planet warms, we are expected to experience more extreme rainfall, leading to more severe flooding as warmer air retains more moisture,” the WMO warned in a statement.

Features of the drug

According to the WMO, Medicane is a hybrid meteorological phenomenon that has some characteristics of a tropical cyclone and other characteristics of a midlatitude storm.

“Historically, activity of this type of storm peaked between September and January,” the WMO says.

With an impact similar to that of an extratropical cyclone, it gets its name from the fact that it occurs over the Mediterranean Sea and, as seen from satellites, has a cloud formation that looks like the “eye” of a hurricane.

The term originated in the 1980s when satellites captured images of cloud patterns that resembled a hurricane, spiraling with a cloudless center (the eye of the hurricane) with clouds and rain around it.

Because it occurs over the Mediterranean, the name came from mixing the English words “Mediterranean” and “Hurricane.”

Contrary to what it seems, the main danger with this type of cyclone is not the winds, but the heavy rains they cause, which explains the flooding.

According to Marcelo Martins, meteorologist at the Environmental Resources and Hydrometeorology Information Center of Santa Catarina (Epagri/Ciram), Medicane behaves like a cyclone.

“What happened in Libya is a phenomenon that occurs frequently in this region because the sea there is very warm. And it rains a lot, it’s like there was a hurricane, the characteristics are practically the same,” explains Martins.

Three days earlier, the Meteorological Center issued warnings about the extreme weather event approaches and notifies all government authorities to take preventive measures. Due to this warning, a state of emergency was declared in the affected regions.

Cities along Libya’s coast were the hardest hit due to the region’s topography, which is surrounded by a long, steep mountain plateau.

The city of Derna was one of the hardest hit, with a population of 125,000.
Derna is located on the coast of Libya and is bisected by a seasonal river.
Two dams on this river were broken by the force of the water.

1 of 1 Libya storm map — Photo: g1 Libya storm map — Photo: g1

Heavy rains leave Libyan cities under water