“Nils will not have the impact of Marta.” The warning comes from Nuno Lopes, responsible for weather forecasting and surveillance at IPMA, when outlining the scenario for the next few hours. Speaking to DN, the meteorologist recalls that the depression, already named in France, “will hit French territory hard”. In Portugal, he explains, “we will be influenced by Nils but, as we are far from its nucleus, the severity will be less than that of Marta”.
Comparison with other recent episodes helps adjust expectations. “With Kristin there is no possible comparison”, he says, stressing that the depression that devastated the central zone “is of another league”. Considering that “In terms of events, there is normality at Nils”pointing to winds of “75 km/h for the coasts and 100 km/h for the mountains”, warns that the biggest reason for attention is the rain, especially due to its duration. “We are talking about persistent precipitation”, he says, that is, “a rainfall of 40 mm in six hours”. The impact, he adds, should be concentrated in specific areas in the North and Center, particularly damaging “the first line of the mountains”, where the saturation of the terrain increases vulnerability.
It is precisely this prior context that, for IPMA, aggravates the risk. “If there weren’t already an accumulation of water in the soil, this precipitation would be perfectly manageable, you could even say that it wouldn’t be a problem”, he notes. But there is and hence the distinction: “in this case, the issue is not meteorological but hydrological”. With more rain, he admits, “there will be more pressure on the dams”, especially “in the central area”, where “we have a problem with river and stream flows”.
Pay attention, therefore, to the possibility of floods and floods, reminds the expert, who reinforces an additional concern, with the potential to continue in the coming days: “one of the consequences of the saturation and weakening of soils continues to be landslides, an issue that is and will continue to arise”.
Regarding the evolution of the episode, Nuno Lopes predicts that “the rain will persist until Wednesday, February 11, in the late afternoon, in the north and central zone”. And the break may be short: “on Thursday, at the end of the day until early Friday morning it will start to rain again, albeit more sparsely”.
Regarding the discharges from dams in Spain, the meteorologist paints a positive scenario. “there, as here, they are smaller and we are slowly managing to regulate the flow rates”.
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