In addition to ‘jumping’ from yellow to red, the extreme risk warning was issued 37 hours before it comes into force, at 3 pm tomorrow, and is valid for 24 hours.
The foreseeable worsening of the weather in the Madeira Archipelago motivated by the approach of the Oscar depression led the IPMA to directly raise the meteorological warning, initially yellow – issued on Saturday – to an extreme risk level (red) for precipitation on the south coast and regions mountains on the island of Madeira.
The issue of a red notice being not unprecedented, in this case the IPMA ‘alert’ appears significantly in advance, the same in relation to the time frame in which it will remain in force.
In fact, the first issue of the red notice took place this morning, around 02:00 am, that is, 37 hours before it came into force – the notice is valid from 15:00 on this Monday. This has never happened with regard to the red notice. Another unique feature is the duration of this ‘alert’ due to the (very) high probability of heavy and persistent rain. For now, the red warning is set to be in effect for the equivalent of an entire day. No more, no less. It will be 24 hours, between 3 pm tomorrow and 3 pm Tuesday, that the south coast and mountainous regions of Madeira will be ‘in the red’. Never has a warning for extreme risk weather conditions lasted so long.
According to the latest IPMA update – communiqué issued at 15:05 – the reason for this scenario, which deserves the due attention of authorities and citizens, results from the characteristics of this storm, which was given the name Oscar, which carries a tropical air mass with an exceptionally high water vapor content, thus resulting in a worsening of the weather, which in the case of the Madeira Archipelago should be felt from the afternoon of the 5th until mid-afternoon of the 6th with heavy precipitation and persistent, with the IPMA admitting accumulations that may exceed 100 liters per square meter, sometimes accompanied by thunderstorms and strong wind from the south quadrant (with gusts of up to 75 km/h, with up to 95 km/h in the highlands) , with greater impact on the southern slopes and in the highlands of the island of Madeira,likely to cause landslides, flash floods and high risk of flooding.