Brief communication: Preliminary hydro-meteorological analysis of the flash flood of 20 August 2018 in Raganello Gorge, southern Italy

Abstract

On 20 August 2018 a flash flood affected the Raganello Creek (southern Italy) causing 10 casualties. The rainfall event was so highly localized that the spatial coverage of rain gauges were inadequate to measure it, while radar products showed a storm cell with rain peaks of about 70–100 mm h−1. This scientific report provides a preliminary hydro-meteorological analysis of the event and evaluates the forecasting skills of a system based on the WRF–WRF-Hydro models, using both one-way and fully coupled approaches. The first results show a reasonable simulation of the event in terms of both rainfall and hydrological impact.