Article #19494

Difficulty means severe storms arrive with little warning of where or when exactly they will hit, with sometimes deadly consequences

In October 2024 eastern Spain was hit by a deadly storm when more than a year’s worth of rain fell on the streets of Valencia. The resulting floods claimed more than 230 lives. Weather forecasts predicted that a major storm was on the way, but failed to pinpoint exactly where and when heavy rainfall would land.

Now a study has shown that one of the reasons rainfall is so hard to predict is because climate models are underestimating the shifts in large-scale wind patterns, such as the jet stream, that control storm tracks and rainfall distribution.