Numerical simulation and sensitivity study of a severe hailstorm in northeast Spain

During the afternoon of August 16th 2003 a severe hail event occurred in the town of Alcaniz in the Ebro Valley (Spain). This storm brought with it intense rain and hail precipitation that caused severe floods, damaged cars and street furniture. A diagnosis, using data from ECMWF, showed the presence of a mesolow at surface level centered over the Northeast of Spain, carrying winds from the Mediterranean Sea towards the Central Ebro Valley. At medium and high levels, a trough, whose axis extended over the Northwest of the Iberian Peninsula, moved eastwards preceded at 500 hPa by a thermal trough that caused increasing instability before the arrival of the geopotential trough. A numerical study of this event has been carried out using the MM5 model with a double aim. On the one hand, it attempts to check whether or not the simulation reproduces the storm in Alcaniz. On the other hand, it carries out a sensitivity experiment in order to evaluate the contribution of two specific factors: topography and solar radiation. Compared with radar data, the control simulation reproduces the region affected by the storm reasonably well. The suppression of topography and/or solar radiation substantially modifies the surface mesolow and the spatial distribution of the precipitation. Neither of these factors, considered independently, reproduces the precipitation caused by the storm in Alcaniz. However, the results illustrate the importance of the synergic effect of these two factors on the spatial localization of the storm and on the intensity of the precipitation registered. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.