Patrícia Gomes, meteorologist on duty at the Portuguese Institute of the Sea and the Atmosphere (IPMA), told Lusa that the precipitation that had fallen since late Wednesday afternoon “is not anything extraordinary, since it is winter and situations of rain are quite recurrent at this time of the year”.

What was extraordinary, she explained, were “the values that occurred in some places, quite high and that reached values for orange warnings and occasionally red warnings in some places”.

Patrícia Gomes explained that the average precipitation values for the whole month of December are around 126 millimetres for Lisbon, values that were not reached, standing at 80 millimetres, in 24 hours.

“If we compare it with other episodes of precipitation in past years, they are relatively far from the highest values of precipitation that occurred in 24 hours for the city of Lisbon”, she said, recalling the day of February 18, 2008, when 118 millimetres were recorded in 24 hours.

The meteorologist said that, for Thursday night and early Friday morning, “heavy precipitation” is expected and, due to this situation, some of the districts that are currently on yellow alert could be raised to orange warnings.

The districts of Lisbon, Faro and Santarém were on a red warning until about 02:30 today, due to forecasts of heavy rain and thunderstorms, the most serious of a scale of three, issued whenever there is a meteorological situation of extreme risk.

Setúbal, Leiria and Beja were placed on orange warning and the remaining districts on yellow.