Primera borrasca con nombre de la temporada 2023-2024 en Espana. Vientos huracanados en el Cantabrico y oleaje de mas de 9 metros en Galicia.
3 fallecidos, miles de incidencias por arboles caidos, inundaciones locales en zonas costeras del Cantabrico.
Bernard came in from the northwest barely two days after Aline, in the classic Atlantic autumn sequence: one depression behind another down the same corridor. It unloaded over the Cantabrian coast and the northwest, where the relief forces humid air to rise all at once. On the Asturian coast it left both one of the lowest pressures and one of the strongest winds in the series, which is the combination that really does damage: the wind builds the sea just as the tide and the low pressure have already raised the water level.
The figures that follow are not estimates and have not been copied from any bulletin: they were computed on ERA5, the European Centre’s reanalysis, at a point representative of the area affected — the Asturian coast — and compared with the 29 complete years of the series. What matters is not the number but the rank.
| Variable | During the episode | Rank in the series |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum pressure | 982.6 hPa | falls in the most extreme 0.1 % of the series of the 254,208 hours measured |
| Maximum 10 m wind | 41 km/h | falls in the most extreme 0.1 % of the series of the 254,208 hours |
| Rainfall over 5 days | 41.9 mm | does not particularly stand out in the series of the 10,588 5-day windows |
| Minimum temperature | 10.0 °C | does not particularly stand out in the series of the 254,208 hours |
At this point, what was exceptional about Bernard was the depth of the low and the wind. The other variables stayed within what this place sees with some regularity. To place the rainfall: the wettest 5-day episode recorded at the Asturian coast in the whole series was 174.5 mm, on 9 June 2010.
ERA5 works with cells of about 28 kilometres and smoothed terrain. It describes the air mass well and allows one storm to be compared with another on the same yardstick, which is precisely what cannot be done with station records that have changed site. What it does not see is the detail: a storm that unloads over one particular ravine is averaged across a cell of 800 square kilometres, and that is why its totals are always lower than those of a well-sited rain gauge. For the official figures of an episode, AEMET is the authority.
Data: ERA5 · Copernicus Climate Data Store, CC-BY licence. Sources and methodology →
