Status: Finalised Material from: Ivan, Linus
Picture
1. Impact
Freezing rain affected parts of Romania on 24-25 January, especially in the eastern areas of the Danube Plain where the capital Bucharest is situated. It created treacherous driving conditions as the roads were covered with thick ice and a lot of fallen trees. After a break a new freezing rain episode started at 18Z on 24 January and finished at 3Z on 25 January. There were reported 7 mm of freezing rain in total during this second freezing rain episode as temperatures stayed below freezing between -0.4 and -1.1C. According to the SYNOP reports widespread freezing rain occurred in the area marked with the highest probabilities. More scattered freezing rain also affected northwestern Romania, NE Serbia and some Bulgarian stations in the Danube Plain.
2. Description of the event
The table below shows observations from Bucharest and a photo of the ice on a road.
The plots below show observations of precipitation type and short forecasts from HRES and ENS.
The radiosonde observations from Bucharest taken at 23:14 UTC on 24 January reveal a warm layer (temperatures above freezing) between 910 hPa and 860 hPa.
3. Predictability
3.1 Data assimilation
3.2 HRES
The plots below show precipitation type meteogram for Bucharest and a forecast tephigram for 21Z on 24 January. Please note the layer of above freezing in the tephigram.
HRES pretty accurately represented the vertical profile in the area affected by freezing rain. The warm layer in the model was slightly deeper than the observed one.
3.3 ENS
The plots below show probabilities of dominating precipitation type for Bucharest. The last forecast had very high probabilities for freezing rain, with being lower in the earlier one. But it is worth to notice the early signal of the risk for freezing rain 6 days in advance.
