Heavy rain and thunderstorms in the Mediterranean: Will Daniel develop into a hurricane?

Daniel will move southward through the Mediterranean with continued fury through Thursday afternoon. Rainfall is very high. Some weather models calculate more than 120 liters per square meter. In addition to heavy rain, lightning and thunder are still active over Greece. Our meteorologist Carlo Pfaff explains: “There will be some heavy showers and thunderstorms early today, but they will gradually decrease from the afternoon. The area will be dry at night. The rain will then move towards Libya.

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But it’s not done yet. According to some weather models, the low in the warming Mediterranean could gain significantly more energy and develop into a subtropical storm or even a powerful cyclone. There are differences between hurricanes and drugs, mainly in their formation but also in their intensity. Medicines have rarely reached hurricane or tornado strength so far.

Weather models predicted heavy rain in Greece in particular, with storm Daniel forecast to reach winds of up to 200 km/h off the Libyan coast by Sunday. It corresponds to category three to four hurricane strength, known as the Saffir-Simpson wind scale. In this case we are talking about a so-called “big hurricane” – something that has never happened before in the Mediterranean. Next Monday it could hit the Libyan coast with strong hurricane-force winds.

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Greece has been experiencing unprecedented rainfall for the past few days. The amount of water that has fallen in the Thessaly region in recent days is the largest ever in the country since this data was collected, according to the meteorological agency EMY. Most recently, the town and municipality of Corditsa and the surrounding communities were hit hard. Residents took shelter on the rooftops as the water leveled up to the roofs of the houses in many places. “The water is up to four meters high in some places,” a resident told broadcaster Mega.

However, Zagora town recorded a record 754 liters of rain per square meter between midnight and 8:45 pm on Tuesday. According to the National Observatory in Athens, the record was previously held by the town of Makrynica in the region.

However, in December 2009, rainfall was more than half of the new record, at 417 liters per square metre. “What is happening in Magnesia is a very serious event in terms of the amount and intensity of the rain and its duration,” chief meteorologist Kostas Lagovardos told the Kathimerini newspaper.

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