THE EXTREMELY RAINY 2014 IN BULGARIA (original) (raw)

In 2014 almost all stations of Bulgaria reported annual rainfalls significantly exceeding the norm, especially as far as the warm semester quantities are concerned. In this paper, the situation in the lowlands, plains, hilly areas and mountainous valley is presented. In eight of the 16 stations studied, the annual rainfalls exceeded 1000 mm, when the norm for most stations in the non-mountainous part of the country (lower than 600 m of elevation) was between 500 and 700 mm. Excess above annual norms varied between 177 and 578 mm with average values of about 350-450 mm. First and foremost this was due to a precipitation increase in the warm half of the year. An analysis of typical meteorological situations was made in order to clarify the causes for this anomaly. The number of Icelandic cyclones associated with rainfall situations over the country was slightly smaller than the usual one. The Mediterranean cyclones activity in the warm half of the year marked an untypical upward trend, most likely due to NAO index short time shifting from a positive to a negative phase. It can be suggested that this was the main reason for the substantial growth of rainfalls in Bulgaria during the warm season of 2014.