With particular incidence between the middle of the afternoon and the end of the night, the amounts of precipitation recorded this Tuesday, the 6th of December, were very significant in most of the 20 meteorological stations of the IPMA in the Madeira Archipelago, with emphasis on the areas heights of Funchal.
At Chão do Areeiro, the accumulated precipitation in the last 24 hours (until 08:00 today) was 159.8 liters per square meter (mm), with the extremes in the two meteorological warning criteria (1h and 6h) reaching 25, 0 mm/1h and 97.1 mm/6h, that is, they corresponded, respectively, to yellow and red warning values, the latter being reached in just 3 hours (60.0 mm) of incessant rain (between 19 and 10 pm).
‘Alert’ levels in orange and red were found ‘higher up’, on Pico do Areeiro (21.2 mm/1h; 81.1 mm/6h; 135.4 mm/24h), and ‘below’, in Monte (28.5 mm/1h; 74.6 mm/6h; 102.7 mm/24h). In this upper parish of Funchal, the most intense rain episode was torrential to the point where the amount of red warning (6h) was practically reached in 3 hours (58.1 mm/between 5 and 8 pm).
Just as much or more significant were the amounts of rain that fell in short periods of time, to the point where the extremes reached 9.4 mm/10min (almost yellow warning for 1h) and 21.0 mm/30 min (orange warning for 1h).
Of the entire IPMA network of meteorological stations, only in Achadas da Cruz/Lombo da Terça, Porto Moniz, Santana and Ponta de São Jorge has the precipitation recorded since yesterday not reached meteorological warning values.
Already today (until 08:00) the precipitation that occurred during the night throughout the Madeira Archipelago once again registered yellow warning values (1h) in five meteorological stations located in the mountainous regions and intermediate levels. This was verified in Chão do Areeiro (17.4 mm), in Monte (15.4 mm), in Bica da Cana (12.9 mm), in Pico do Areeiro (12.4 mm) and in Santo da Serra (10.8 mm).