Billions of liters of water fell on the Gharyan district in western Libya in just 24 hours

Arab Weather - The latest satellite images from the Arab Weather Regional Center indicate that northwestern Libya continues to be affected by a stormy winter depression with heavy rain, as thunderstorms affect those areas. Due to the continued rainfall since yesterday afternoon, torrents and floods have formed in many areas, while very large amounts of rain have been recorded.

Billions of liters of water fell on the Gharyan district in western Libya in just 24 hours

Meteorologists said that western Libya has witnessed, since the afternoon and evening hours of Thursday 12/5/2024, a direct impact of a rainy and stormy low pressure system. Due to the location of the low pressure system, successive bundles of cumulonimbus clouds moved towards those areas, which were laden with continuous heavy rains, resulting in the recording of huge amounts of rain, reaching 151 mm of water in Shuaiba Gharyan.

If we do a mathematical calculation, represented by the amount of rain relative to the area, we find that each square meter received 151 liters of water, which means that 694.6 billion liters of water fell in a short period of time, which resulted in the formation of floods, the flow of waterfalls, and the rise in the water level, which resulted in the submergence of many shops and homes in the area.

What awaits western Libya after the heavy rains that hit the country?

In the context, weather maps and satellite images at the Arab Weather Regional Center show that the low pressure system affecting the country continues with the same high rainfall momentum, and will begin to recede in the late night hours, but it continues to bring amounts of rain clouds, which means expectations of an increase in the rainfall during the coming night, and the high warning of torrents and floods continues, including in the capital, Tripoli.

What is the relationship between the warming of the Mediterranean Sea and the difficult weather conditions witnessed in Libya?

Meteorologists at the Arab Weather Center said that the rise in the temperature of the Mediterranean Sea leads to increased evaporation processes and injects large amounts of water vapor into the atmosphere, which increases the humidity of the air above the sea. This humid air can cause the formation of dense clouds and thunderstorms during the fall, during the passage of cold upper basins due to the sharp temperature differences that occur between the upper basins and the water temperature.

Large temperature differences between the sea and the adjacent land can also enhance the up and down air currents, which increases atmospheric instability during the fall. It is known meteorologically that the larger the temperature differences, the more severe the atmospheric disturbances are and during which high-altitude thunderstorm clouds are formed, which bring various weather phenomena such as severe hailstorms of large sizes and very heavy rainfall in a short period of time.

God knows best.