«It doesn’t matter what costume you wear for Halloween. I assure you that maps are scarier. Things are getting serious. All meteorological models coincide and put more than 300 liters in our territory. A real savagery. “To give you an idea, what is going to happen during this next week is comparable to the Tous swamp that also happened at the end of October, in 1982.” Thus begins a message that Luis Aparicio published on his social networks on October 25, a Valencian very fond of meteorology who draws on open data published by different websites, including that of the State Meteorological Agency (Aemet). . His friends nicknamed him ‘Luisito Borrascas’.
In conversation with ABC, Luis displays humility, he does not present himself as a visionary: «I didn’t know it alone, but a lot of people did. You just had to look at the maps, which were the same as those of the Tous flood. “I don’t have a crystal ball or a magic wand, but you could see it.”
The truth is that the message he sent to his contacts on October 25 through Instagram and Facebook read today is impressive: «On Monday (October 28) we will have before us a cold drop of those of a lifetime in our territory. And be careful that a cold drop does not necessarily mean that it is torrential rain (which in this case it will be in some points) but it does mean that it is persistent for several days. So, Roberto, Nachete, etc. “The Zodiac thing was a joke, but it is more than likely that you will see it on TV and closer than you can imagine.”
The most important thing is the recommendations he made, which could even save some lives: “You know, if you have to take cars and so on, walk with Be careful and careful with tunnels, rivers, valleys, streams, ravines, etc. Don’t trust how little or no flow they have. At any moment it can surprise you. In fact, both friends and strangers who read his notice on Facebook later thanked him. “Friend, I have listened to you and have not gone to Requena,” wrote a woman who had planned to take the car and would have been surprised by DANA. «Luis, thank you for your work – another Valencian told him in a text message – and your accurate forecasts. Your warnings helped me cancel my trip to Madrid. “A shame more drastic measures have not been taken.” This is what he is truly proud of, that one of his contacts who stayed home thanks to his prediction is safe today and the worst could have happened to him. “Even if I only saved one life, imagine…” he says excitedly.
«The color scale of the maps falls short»
The warning message from ‘Luisito Borrascas’, who was not the only one he published, ended with a very graphic postscript: «PS: the color scale is practically short. The Aemet will surely have to raise the warnings to red. The same day that Luis published this text, the State Meteorological Agency issued an information note in which it warned of “strong or very strong showers and storms” for Tuesday, October 29, and it would not be until that Tuesday, four days later, when he issued the first red notice for the interior area of northern Valencia.
«There was a lot of wind, more than 80 kilometers per hour from the east. Being at minus 24 degrees in the atmosphere, the cold collides with the heat,” explains Luis. “They are very strange, unusual conditions, but they were there and you could see them coming,” he adds. As a meteorology fan – he explains to ABC the differences in the American, longer-term, and European, shorter and more precise forecast systems – he says he does not understand “why the weather shown on television is limited to saying whether there will be sun, rain… with the atmospheric depression that we had above.
Luis passed the DANA at his home in the capital of Valencia and, fortunately, he did not have to suffer any personal or material damage. This has not been the case in one of their jobs, a paint factory located in the industrial estate of Algemesí, a municipality located next to the mouth of the Magro River in the Júcar. “Here it devastated everything,” says the meteorology fan who works in the factory’s commercial department. Since the passage of DANA and like all his colleagues, his work day consists of going to the factory at 7 in the morning and cleaning it “until there is no longer any natural light, because the electricity still does not work.” account. What Luis’s testimony shows is that a handful of meteorology amateurs who drank from official and open sources saw that a climatological phenomenon was approaching that was not only adverse, but also very dangerous. The terrible events experienced demonstrate that the corresponding authorities did not have the same view as Luis when it came to notifying the citizens.
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