The 12-13 November 1999 flash flood in southern France

The flash flood that occurred on 12-13 November 1999 in meridional France is documented. This event caused 35 fatalities and severe damage to property as rainfall totals locally exceeded 550 mm in 24 h and 620 mm in 48 h. The main issue of the present study is to discuss how realistically the spatial and temporal rainfall distribution of this flash flood event can be represented with present state-of-the-art operational and research modeling frameworks, The predictability of the present event for different forecast ranges is investigated and sensitivity studies are conducted in order to discuss the influence of model physics (convection, microphysics), atmospheric moisture: analysis and Mediterranean sea surface temperature forcing on the quality of the results. it is shown that the present event could be reasonably predicted on forecast ranges of 2-3 days as it was essentially determined by strong moisture advection from the Mediterranean coupled with frontal and orographical lifting. However, precipitation scores show significant sensitivity to both analysis errors and model physics. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.