THE BLIZZARD FROM 25-26 OCTOBER 2014 AND ITS IMPACT ON AIR FLIGHTS
ŞCHIOPU C.-L., CIURLĂU DORUȚAABSTRACT. The blizzard from 25-26 October 2014 and its impact on air flights. On a calendar basis, October is considered the middle month of the fall, and for this reason, some meteorological phenomena such as blizzards, specific of the cold season, may occur extremely rare. Throughout the latest years there haven’t been any blizzards on this specific month, the earliest snow occurring on 15 October 1970 and the first snow cover on 26 October 1988. Climatologically the first month in which blizzard occurs is November with 0-1 days, when the multi-annual average is 0.4 days, therefore, the occurrence of this phenomenon on this month may be considered as an abnormal event which exceeds by far the multi-annual climatologic normalized standards. In order to highlight the synoptic context which determined the blizzard, the authors have revised the synoptic maps of air-pressure topography at the 500 hPa and ground levels and the meteorological data which were extracted from www.wetter3.de, www.ogimet.com, www.sat24.com, www.zamg.ac.at, www.weather.uwyo.edu.
On 25-26 October 2014, the air flight activity was disturbed by the unexpected blizzard conditions and the Air Operators were taken by surprise and the Emergency and Rescue Air Unit (SMURD) could not intervene. Also, the military helicopters were not able to fly in transport missions to Carei (Satu Mare county) where there is the commemoration of the Romanian Army Day and the high officials of the Romanian state which were taking part have arrived with military aircrafts (C-27J Spartan, C-130B Hercules, An-30). After this event, at the landing on Otopeni Military Aerodrome they encountered severe meteorological hazard, but the aircrafts landed in safety conditions.
Keywords: blizzard, October, air-pressure field configuration, impact, air-flights.