Storm Daniel and medicanes

[gallopinggertie]

Storm Daniel formed over the Ionian Sea and moved over the Balkan Peninsula as an extratropical storm before moving southeast over the Mediterranean, acquiring tropical characteristics, and making landfall yesterday near Benghazi, Libya, as a tropical storm, according to Wikipedia. Daniel is an example of a medicane--a storm in the Mediterranean Sea with subtropical or tropical traits.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storm_Daniel#/media/File:Daniel_2023-09-09_1200Z.jpg

It looks like Daniel had deep convection before making landfall. SST's near the coast of Libya are pretty high now, at around 27 degrees Celsius:

http://www.ceam.es/ceamet/SST/index.html

Daniel caused terrible damage in Libya upon making landfall. Yet the NHC doesn't track storms in the Mediterranean, and I'm not aware of any other tropical agency that does.

Was Daniel really tropical? Should the NHC issue advisories for storms in the Mediterranean? This is a sea that is mostly enclosed by land, mostly isolated from the rest of the Atlantic Ocean, and yet still technically part of that ocean.

[CoralRed]

You raise some interesting points. 

What countries have weather satellites focused on the Mediterranean? What countries  track these storms and issue warnings? Don't the Big European Three of UK, France and Germany provide sufficient information and coverage for the smaller and/or poorer countries to the East?

 

 

[dan11295]

Medicanes have always been in this strange spot when it comes whether or not to recognize them as "tropical cyclones"/how to classify them and who should be responsible to monitoring etc. This is due to a few reasons.

1. Temperatures in the Mediterranean have historically been too cold (i.e. <28C) to allow typical warm core TC development. Some times these storms have formed well outside of the typical June-November window  for Northern Hemisphere TC development. These two factors are certainly a historical reason that haven't been classified and tracked as such. Although with better analysis tools its clear many of these storms are warm core cyclones. Daniel would have certainly been named if it had occurred in the Atlantic.

2. These storms have generally been weak, really never turn into warm core hurricanes (probably due to SST limitations). With a couple exceptions have not caused notable damage or loss of life.

3 They are very infrequent.

As far as who would be responsible for tracking, the NHC doesn't make sense, as they will never effect US landmasses in any way. A European body makes much better sense.

[AlexD1990]

This thing has now caused several thousand deaths in Lybia

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[WhiteLawns]

5000 presumed dead and 10000 missing

[HillsdaleMIWeather]

If medicanes keep becoming a bigger threat over the next decade, I imagine the EU would start a forecasting agency for them.

Rest in peace to all those who died, Libya was a terrible place for this to hit

[Normandy]

I would not characterize them as infrequent anymore.  They happen every year at this point and need to be tracked by an agency

[Santa Clause]

7 hours ago, alexderiemer said:

This thing has now caused several thousand deaths in Lybia

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Why did greenskeeper weenie this true statement? This thing was violent.

[NorthShoreWx]

I haven't heard any discussion about the construction of the dams that failed yet.

[etudiant]

1 hour ago, NorthShoreWx said:

I haven't heard any discussion about the construction of the dams that failed yet.

Only comment that I've seen is that there had been no maintenance of these dams since Qaddafi was overthrown in 2011, due to the ongoing civil war. Nothing about their construction or function though.

Iirc, Qaddafi's signature project was the 'great man made river', to divert water from the Atlas mountains to the population centers, around Tripoli and elsewhere, so he must have been actively building reservoirs. I've no idea whether these dams were part of that effort.

[BlizzardNole]

From that Wiki link at the top:  "On 5 September, flooding in Thessaly, Greece, killed at least one person.^[8] On the same day, the village of Zagora received 1,092 millimetres (43.0 in) of rain, 55 times more than the country's average rainfall for the same month."

Holy crap that is Houston (Harvey) numbers!

[MDScienceTeacher]

Tropical is a high bar.. at least it used to be before NHC started naming ever cluster of thunderstorms producing a gust over 38 mph..  that being said the Mediterranean is not capable of producing tropical storms.  This is why these storms are not tracked as such.. 

The reality of the situation is that the Infrastructure didnt hold in Libya... in order to understand why we would need to go in to the geopolitical realm and thats a no no here.

[DDweatherman]

40 minutes ago, MDScienceTeacher said:

Tropical is a high bar.. at least it used to be before NHC started naming ever cluster of thunderstorms producing a gust over 38 mph..  that being said the Mediterranean is not capable of producing tropical storms.  This is why these storms are not tracked as such.. 

The reality of the situation is that the Infrastructure didnt hold in Libya... in order to understand why we would need to go in to the geopolitical realm and thats a no no here.

This is definitely a post someone like Rich Foot from foots forecast would make. 

[NorthHillsWx]

Not sure any international agency would’ve prevented what happened in Libya, sadly. 

[Normandy]

That’s nonsense thinking.  That’s like saying there’s no agency in the world that could have prevented the 60,000 people who died in Katrina because the NHC doesn’t exist.  Agencies give warnings and warnings lower risk of mass casualty.  Don’t have a put your head in the sand and throw your hands up mentality.

[emblaze2]

Who named the storm "Daniel"? I see the name repeatedly in media reports, but no mention of what agency or organization baptized it.

[olafminesaw]

7 minutes ago, emblaze2 said:

Who named the storm "Daniel"? I see the name repeatedly in media reports, but no mention of what agency or organization baptized it.

The Hellenic National Meteorological Service per wikipedia.