Has a hurricane ever formed in the Mediterranean?

ArabiaWeather.com- Hurricanes are considered one of the most destructive weather phenomena on the planet, with their strong winds and heavy rains. They are often mentioned with words such as “victims” or “material losses”.

The residents of many Arab countries, with the exception of the residents of the Sultanate of Oman, may feel relieved that the impact of hurricanes does not affect them, due to the fact that most Arab countries are far from the oceans, facing bodies of water of limited size, namely the Mediterranean Sea, the Red Sea and the Arabian Gulf.

However, some may be surprised that the Mediterranean Sea in particular witnesses in some years the formation of subtropical depressions , similar in their characteristics and shape to hurricanes, and it is an atmospheric phenomenon that raises great controversy among weather scientists, as it combines the characteristics of tropical or subtropical hurricanes and even polar storms. What makes it difficult for any scientific body to classify it definitively is not up for discussion.

Hurricane of January 1995

Satellite image of a Mediterranean cyclone that formed during the winter of 1995

Perhaps the clearest example of this phenomenon is what happened in mid-January 1995, when a hurricane formed in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, in the maritime area between Italy, Greece and Libya.

The story of this hurricane began on January 13, 1995, with the presence of an air turbulence in northern Libya, with the convection accompanying it extending from Tunisia in the south to Greece and Albania in the north, and the next day, the air turbulence became more organized, so the clouds took a clear rotational movement , to form an air depression that quickly separated itself from the cold air mass in the north, to acquire tropical characteristics.

On January 15, 1995, one of the German ships passed near the depression, and at that time the crew warned that the ship was exposed to strong winds with a speed of more than 140 kilometers per hour, and a low atmospheric pressure of 975 millibars, which is equivalent to the wind force in a first-class hurricane. .

During the noon hours of that day, the center of the storm appeared in the form of a well-defined "eye", which confirmed that what was formed that day was a hurricane in every sense of the word.

conditions such as these hurricanes

The cold air masses coming from the north are considered the main factor in the formation of such weather systems, as the interaction of this cold air with moist and warm air coming from the south leads to the formation of frontal depressions, in conjunction with the warming of sea water to more than 20 degrees Celsius, in addition to The presence of severe weather conditions.

In the event that all the above weather conditions are available, the only remaining condition is the separation of the formed depression from the cold mass in the north, and its acquisition of sufficient tropical characteristics, and this matter only happens very rarely.

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