This weather situation has only happened about 5 times in the last 60 years in Madeira.
As the regional delegate of the Portuguese Institute of the Sea and the Atmosphere (IPMA) said this morning, the storm that is affecting Madeira is known as an ‘atmospheric river’. According to a report in the newspaper Público, this is a meteorological phenomenon in which there is transport of moisture in a relatively narrow band, transport that is made from the lowest latitudes to the highest.
“The atmospheric river is an air mass corridor [usually of tropical origin] with a very high water vapor content”, Jorge Ponte, meteorologist at the Portuguese Institute of the Sea and the Atmosphere (IPMA) explained to Público.
The person in charge also advanced that newspaper that “if there is forcing [that is, conditions for vertical movements in the atmosphere] for this water to fall, there may be very high precipitation. If there is no forcing, it may not even have very high precipitation, ”he said.
In Madeira, which is under a red warning for precipitation – for the highlands and southern slopes – between 3 pm on Monday and 3 pm on Tuesday, Jorge Ponte recognizes that this is “a situation that requires special care, even for the history in Madeira in this type of situation”, noted Jorge Ponte.
Remember that Victor Prior said that this phenomenon happened 5 or 6 times in 60 years in the Region.