Medicanes

“Medicane” sounds like a mash-up of medicine and a candy cane—maybe something to get your kiddos to take their medicine. The term is a mash-up, but there’s nothing sweet about it. The word is short for “Mediterranean hurricane”—a compact storm twirling across the Mediterranean Sea.

Unlike hurricanes in the Atlantic or Pacific oceans, those in the Mediterranean are most likely to fire up in the fall and early winter. A cold low-pressure system moves in from the Atlantic or the Arctic. As the cold air crosses the warmer sea water, the temperature difference builds big thunderstorms. Air swirls around the storms, forming a spinning system that looks like a tropical storm or hurricane.

Because the Mediterranean is fairly small, so are the medicanes. They’re seldom more than about 150 miles in diameter. And they seldom last more than about three days. With less time and space to develop, they can’t grow as powerful as their bigger cousins in the Atlantic and Pacific. Only one has reached the equivalent of a category-two hurricane.

Even so, medicanes are deadly. They can dump huge amounts of rain, causing major flooding. The strongest medicane pelted parts of Greece with more than two feet of rain, killing four people. And the deadliest one, known as Daniel, hit in September of 2023. It killed 16 people in Greece, then crossed the Mediterranean to Libya. Flooding there killed an estimated 6,000—the deadly power of a medicane.