If a total of 463 millimeters of rain falls in Jeseníky, we can imagine this quantity as a meter by meter block of water that is 46.3 centimeters high.
The content of such a block is 463 liters. And that’s a lot of water that doesn’t have a chance to soak in. In addition, it is necessary to realize that the exact same block of water will fall right next to it during those four days, and also next to…
Like 3.5 baths
And all of them will rush down the slopes of the Moravian mountains to the lowlands. For an even better idea, let’s say that an average bathtub has a volume of approx. 130 liters. For every square meter in the mountains, three and a half baths are poured over the course of four days. Just to clarify here, this is a full bath. When bathing, we usually fill ourselves with about half, then we push the water higher with our own body.
More than anywhere else in the whole year!
In the driest place in the Czech Republicwhich lies in the rain shadow of the Ore Mountains, in Libědice in the Chomutovsk Region it falls 410 mm, i.e. 410 liters per square meter, for the whole year. In other words, it will rain less for the whole year than is currently expected in Jeseníky. The average annual rainfall in the Czech Republic is about 700 mm, i.e. 700 liters per square meter. At the rainiest place in the republic, Bílí Potok in Frýdlantsk, 1705 mm falls annually.
Where did the extreme downpours come from?
Why is it raining so much? She “fed” the raindrop with moisture extremely warm seas – Mediterranean, Black and even Baltic. And now the water in the clouds in the form of low pressure Boris invaded Central Europe.
“The trough is being fed by seas that are now three to five degrees warmer than normal. Moisture, the current one, draws not only from the Mediterranean Sea, but also from the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea,” explains Leopold Haimberger from the Meteorological and Geophysical Institute of the University of Vienna.
Usually over our territory low pressures come from Italy and tend to be significantly smaller. “The current low takes air from the Black Sea in a great arc to central Europe,” Haimberger explained. At the same time, air from the Baltic and the Mediterranean also penetrates into it. According to him, today’s situation is very similar to that of 2002. Even then, an area of low air pressure formed over Italy, which transferred a huge amount of moisture to the north, and added moisture from the Baltic.
It is said that such situations are not new in themselves, but their probability increases with ongoing climate change, precisely because of the high sea temperatures and the high water evaporation in late summer.
