%0 Journal Article
%T An Exceptional Case of Freezing Rain in Bucharest (Romania)
%J Atmosphere | An Open Access Journal from MDPI
%D 2019
%R https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos10110673
%X A high-impact freezing rain event affected parts of southeastern Romania on 24¨C26 January 2019. The freezing rain caused extensive damages in Bucharest, the capital city of Romania. The meteorological analysis highlighted the presence of a particular synoptic pattern involving a high-pressure system advecting cold air mass at low levels, while at mid-levels a warm and humid intrusion was associated with a low-pressure system of Mediterranean origin. At Bucharest, the vertical profiles from ERA5 and radiosondes emphasized the presence of a thick warm layer between 1000¨C1400 m above the re-freezing layer close to the surface. A climatology of freezing rain events in Bucharest was built to understand the frequency and intensity of this phenomenon. On average, there were approximately 5 observations of freezing rain in Bucharest per year between 1980¨C2018. The number of consecutive freezing rain days was used as a proxy for the event severity. Moderate-duration events (2 consecutive days) represented 16 periods of all 59 non-overlapping freezing rain periods in Bucharest and long-duration events (3 consecutive days) represented 3 periods. The monthly distribution showed that freezing rain occurs more frequently between December¨CFebruary with a maximum in December. The moderate and long-duration freezing rain events were associated with two main sub-synoptic patterns related to the Carpathians lee cyclogenesis
%U https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/10/11/673