Torrential rain hits ‘the red’ at Pico do Areeiro and Quinta Grande

Madeira is on an orange warning until noon today for heavy rainfall and thunderstorms.

It was late but it arrived. The predicted rainfall that ended up not being recorded during the day yesterday appeared, and in force, during the dawn of today, reaching, in the last hour, very significant extreme values ​​in some localities of Madeira covered by the network of meteorological stations of the IPMA.

Highlight for the torrential rain that fell at the end of dawn at Pico do Areeiro, where between 05:30 and 06:30 49.6 liters per square meter (mm) were registered – above 40 mm / 1h corresponds to a red warning – and to Quinta Grande, with 40.3 mm / 1h, between 06:00 and 07:00.

In these stations, the 10 minutes of greatest precipitation intensity reached 13.0 mm and 14.6 mm, respectively.

In the case of Pico do Areeiro, the amount of precipitation accumulated during the night has gained proportions of deluge by doubling the red warning record – above 60 mm / 6h in just 2 hours (61.0 mm / 2h; 67.1 mm / 3h; 72.3mm / 6h).

The water load was very localized, since, at the Chão do Areeiro station, it rained only half of what happened at the top of the mountain.

The IPMA, which at the beginning of the morning had issued a yellow warning for precipitation starting at 9:00 am, in the middle of the morning, anticipated the warning and raised the ‘orange’ for the entire island of Madeira. Orange warning that runs until noon, then turns yellow, throughout the Region, until 21:00 today, except in the mountainous regions, where it will remain in force until the beginning of Sunday night.

From Diário Notícias

Photo from Bar Rodrigues where I’m having my coffee and watching the storm.