Rare Hurricane Force Mediterranean Hurricane Begins In Greece

This type of storm, called Medicane, is unknown until recent years. The region is expected to make landfall in southwestern Greece on Friday.

Thursday Friday's rare Mediterranean cyclone began raking western Greece with heavy rains and is expected to hit the country at full strength on Friday with hurricane-force winds and life-threatening flash floods in some places, forecasters said.

Cyclone Ianos is an example of what meteorologists sometimes call Medicane - a type of storm that was unknown until the 1990s but powerful. The atmosphere and sea were mostly seen as warm.

Thursday Saturday, Greece's National Meteorological Service issued an unusual bulletin warning of extraordinary danger for the southern parts of the country's mainland, a region known for its mild weather that begins Thursday afternoon and continues into Saturday. Forecasters warned that a foot or more of rain could fall on places.

Because Mediterranean storms do not occur in the tropics, meteorologists do not call them tropical storms or hurricanes. But Ianos deserves everything but the name, with cyclonic strong winds and satellite images showing its characteristic dense cloud wheel and a well-defined eye.

Late Thursday Friday, as it crossed the Ionian Sea, the tropical storm filled in with strong winds and was expected to reach hurricane strength of 75 miles per hour or more by Friday.

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The storm emerged as a low pressure system over Libya, moving north and then east over the Mediterranean, brushing off southern Italy and gaining strength, drawing moisture from 81-degree warm waters in places.

It was expected to make landfall on the northwestern coast of the Peloponnesian peninsula on Friday, but forecasters said the greatest danger of flooding and high winds extended slightly northward around the Gulf of Patras.

Saturday and Sunday, Ianos was expected to weaken as it crossed the Mora, south of Athens, over land.