Portugal prepares for another week of storms with rain, wind, and snow

Lisbon.-Portugal prepares for another week of storms with rain, wind and snow, after the passage of the Kristin depression, which in recent days left five dead in the Iberian country, floods and significant damage.

The meteorologist from the Portuguese Institute of Sea and Atmosphere (IPMA), Jorge Ponte, told EFE that satellite images show a current coming from the west disturbed by the passage of depressions and associated frontal systems at the latitude of the Iberian Peninsula, which will be maintained throughout the next week and probably the following one. Consequently, "we are going to continue with very rainy weather, mainly in the north and central regions of Portugal, although it will also rain a lot in the south, sometimes with strong wind and also very strong maritime agitation, with some episodes of snow in the highlands", the expert pointed out. In recent days, it has been the strong wind that has caused the collapse of trees and structures such as scaffolding and electrical poles, which has left hundreds of thousands without power at home.

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Underline that it will continue to blow hard with gusts of 70 to 90 kilometers per hour, although, for the moment, nothing indicates that it will be as "severe" as this week, when it reached a maximum recorded speed of 178 kilometers per hour in Montalegre, near the border with Galicia (Spain), where the measuring station itself was destroyed. The meteorologist indicated that depressions like Kristin or Joseph, which have passed through Portugal and Spain in the last month, are common at this time of year, but what has changed is their trajectory, as they usually head towards the United Kingdom. They usually form on the east coast of the United States or in Newfoundland (Canada), near Greenland, due to the collision of tropical and polar air masses, and follow a west-to-east trajectory, crossing the North Atlantic. "Normally when the anticyclone is a little stronger in the Azores region, those storms tend to go more towards the north, to the region of Ireland or the Bay of Biscay, but as the anticyclone is further south, what we call the 'storm track' (storm track) is further south at the moment and the jet stream too", he pointed out. That more southerly positioning causes the depressions to move through lower latitudes than normal, towards the south, and affect the Iberian Peninsula. "It's not unprecedented, but it is a more typical time for Great Britain and not so much for the Iberian Peninsula, but it's happening and cyclically, in fact. It should be a more exceptional winter in that sense, although it is not unprecedented," remarked Ponte.