Genoa low over Poland

The ever-intensifying global warming amplifies frequency and magnitude of extreme weather events. After months or insufficient rainfall and consequent drought, the tide has turned. The Mediterranean Sea, whose temperature is affected by a massive heat wave, in early July 2025 ran 6 Celsius degrees higher than usually at this time of year, produced masses of water vapour. The evaporated water formed rainclouds, which drifted towards central Europe, in a language of meteorology as part of a low pressure system, called Genoa low.

The very existence of the Genoa low and its abundance in rainfall are not a problem itself. The hazardous nature is driven by its co-existence with an anticyclone, which does not let rainclouds roll by and spread precipitation over large swathes of land. Instead, a strong anticyclone renders the Genoa low stationary, which effects in several hours of solid rainfall in a specific area. Such situation happened in September 2024 and resulted in severe, though confined to a few towns, flooding in south-western Poland.

This time the forecasts were not alarming as then, but pointed at serious peril of intense rainfall in Śląsk Cieszyński. A serious risk of above-average precipitation was clear in forward-looking visualisations over a week ago. The scale of a potential disaster, however, was unknown until last moment. Genoa lows are poorly predictable, an anticyclone’s behaviour is the core unknown variable. The less stationary a low is and the less abrupt its nature, the lower the risk of flood.

This year the precedent drought has effectively reduced danger of a major flood, however local flash floods were quite conceivable, especially since dried-up soil could have difficulty absorbing large amounts of rainwater.

The rainfall began on Tuesday, 8 July and has lasted until now. It turned out to be far less intense than predicted and wreaked less havoc than many feared. Preventive actions have been taken to avert a disaster witness mere 10 months earlier in similar circumstances.

Countrywide there have been no submerged inhabited areas and no major losses were reported.

In Warsaw no records have been broken. The highest one day precipitation over the last week reached 24 millimetres (vs. 93.8 millimetres of rain fallen on 19 August 2024). Also the monthly record of the wettest July, set in 2011 (295.8 millimetres over the entire month) seems unthreatened as of now (so far the accumulated precipitation in the first 12 days of the month totalled 28 millimetres. Next days are to bring moderately wet high summer, with no extreme weather. May heat waves and other radical events pass Warsaw by!

Slowly on the mend

In the last days eyes in Poland were on the south-western part of the country plagued by the largest flood since 2010. Although major cities escaped getting under water, mostly thanks to a big detention basin Racibórz Dolny, completed in 2020, several small towns have been completely destroyed, especially when dams or embankments could not resist masses of bursting water.

My natural reaction in response to such disaster would be to get involved personally in some aid raising schemes. Sadly, my health prevented me from that. This time I had to take care of myself to be able to help others in the future and confined to donating money to foundations and organisations which will make good use of it. In such critical situations Poles tend to display short-lasting, yet intense commitment to help those in need, yet restoring the damaged areas will last months.

Back to my backyard – the progress of my recovery is slow, but visible. On Monday I returned to working from bed or standing next to a chest of drawers. Workload turned out to be burdensome, however I could no longer stand lying in bed and reading. Getting back to professional life at least gave me some flavour of the days when things were normal.

On Thursday I drove (the very driving was ok, but getting out of the car after sitting 25 minutes was a nightmare) to a renowned doctor specialising in the lumbar spine. Last weekend I did a three-hour search online to pick five best orthopaedists in the region and my girlfriend ranked them. The doctor, Mr Kamil Koszela (I wholeheartedly recommend in case you have a similar ailments, which I definitely not wish on you) turned out to fully deserve all accolades. Knowledgeable, friendly, helpful and honest – he started the least invasive therapy by injected collagen into tissues around aching joints. Being pricked with a thin needle in such sensitive places does not belong to pleasant experiences, but it seems to have helped a bit. Next sets of injections due on 26 September and on 3 October, with three sessions being a bare minimum, but the therapy might be extended up to 6 sets.

According to the doctor, pulling through will presumably last until the second half of October, therefore I patiently wait. I know I need to give my spine much rest, so only lying and walking are in order. On Friday we took a two-kilometre walk, yesterday I also strolled in the sunshine for 40 minutes or so. Such jaunts are optimum to keep the body in some motion, ye avoiding excessive strain.

After I recover I will need to take preventive steps to minimise the risk of such immobility bringing me down in the future. Besides, I still do not know what I will be proscribed to do and not to do in my daily life and in terms of doing sports recreationally. This uncertainty does not add comfort, but I remain upbeat when it comes to my life returning to normalcy.

From the dried-up suburb...

After the terrible downpour that caused numerous ponds and brooks to wreak havoc in the neighbourhood we have enjoyed three days of sunshine and warmth. The weather has been conducive to the ground which could absorb more water. Yesterday I didn’t go out anywhere, as every decent PO-voter I just had a barbecue and gobbled up grilled sausages as the fire engines were pumping the water out of flooded gardens. Today I cycled to see the scale of destruction in the southern suburbs of Warsaw…

Here’s the most awful aftermath of the severe rainfalls. The wall of this not that new building collapsed. I don’t know when exactly, but last weekend it was unspoilt and on Friday it looked like this. My version of event is that the land beneath the building slid, foundations sagged and the wall collapsed… Note that the building was put up some forty years ago and for four decades nothing comparable to the Corpus Christi downpour happened. Yes, I know, I should have stopped a bike and then snap. That’s why it’s blurred.

One of many “ponds” in Nowa Wola, I counted around a dozen of similar XXL-puddles. Still one can see there many hoses piping out waters from garages, basements and gardens. Fortunately I saw only one household where the water must have got inside and furniture were put out and drying on a backyard.

I didn’t notice any damages caused by water in Zgorzała, but in Jeziorki things look worse (at first sight and three days after the actual flooding). Here you can see another “temporary lake”, across the tracks, beyond ul. Gogolińska.

A more comprehensive report from this area can be found on W-wa Jeziorki blog – part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5. One of the pictures, taken from the platform of W-wa Jeziorki station shows the same Skoda Favorit, waterlogged. I wonder if the engine of hapless car kicks in.

To the right – culprit of flooding on ul. Puławska on Friday morning – an inconspicuous pond on ul. Pozytywki. Who’d suppose its waters could spill over…? Today ul. Pozytywki is passable, I noticed some houses had been underwater as their dwellers put out some of their belongings…

Ul. Puławska is entirely dry. The green cult Tico is still there. On TVN Warszawa I saw a post of a guy who claimed to be the owner of that car. I doesn’t look like a vehicle whose engine wouldn’t start right away… I wanted to photograph the marks of water level in green office building, but a security guard threatened to take away my camera and I had to dash off without snapping the building.

Pond in Mysiadło still floods the area around, but the water on the pavement was shallow enough to cycle through it. What’s going to happen next? Forecasters are issuing warnings against new storms and heavy rainfalls from tomorrow on. Plus we are quite likely to face another disaster, unbearable heat – the temperature in Warsaw may reach +32C on Friday. Needless to say such weather is very conducive to formation of storm clouds…

From the flooded suburb

Until yesterday I thought if you live far from a river you won’t be underwater. Until yesterday I was wrong. The Wednesday downpour was ghastly, yesterday the rain was pelting down for around four hours. The electricity was cut off, so around quarter past nine I decided to go to bed. In the morning I woke up, my father and I checked if there was no water in the garage and in the basement. Fortunately we didn’t notice a single droplet of water since three years ago after our garage was flooded, my father got the permission to revamp the draining system and the rainwater can flow into the sewage drains.

As it turned out, in the neighbourhood there were very few people lucky like us. Many gardens and basements are flooded, some 100 metres away on one of the backyards water reached a level of 40 centimetres. As the media report, the situation is really alarming in Piaseczno, where a small brook unexpectedly turned into a big lake. Dirty water reaches there a level of around one metre, dwellers of local houses and blocks are being evacuated…

At my school no one thought it would be a nice idea to let the students enjoy the long weekend before the actual exam period, so I decided to try to get there. To no avail, as you might have surmised…
On my way to the bus stop I saw nothing more disturbing than flooded street and gardens. Having closed in on ul. Puławska I beheld the pond in Mysiadło in a size I’ve never seen before – usually the pavement is three metres away from the pond. The attempt to get somehow to Warsaw would have been a total mistake, if it hadn’t been for the photo coverage I could prepare.





In spite of the long weekend and non-peak hours the traffic jam on ul. Puławska was worse than usual. The bus on the photo to the right departed from the bus stop in Mysiadło just a few seconds before I get there and decided to walk towards the junction of ul. Puławska and ul. Karczunkowska which had been underwater. By the time I got there the bus didn’t even reach the stop in Dąbrówka, I walked around three times faster than the vehicles moved. The sight was really dreadful – both lanes were flooded, some desperate guys driving towards Piaseczno were trying to get through the great puddle. I decided to give up on the abortive idea of getting anywhere and returned home. On my way I snapped once again the pond in Mysiadło and one of the willows, struck by a lightening yesterday. I marked the “normal” shore with yellow dotted line.

Back home I found out the situation was getting worse. Neighbours said the sewage treatment plant in Piaseczno has also been flooded and doesn’t work. If it’s not fixed soon the sewage may blow up and start pouring into garages, basements and to the streets.

I didn’t take photos where the tragedy is really big and where the dwellers were fighting the water. Above you can see only a flooded field, one third of the village look like this. I heard landline phones also don’t work after the water washed the switchboard box… I hope this was the last rainfall and in the coming two days the misery of those who suffered losses won’t be aggravated…

Catch-up post

After three weeks of plugging away and being busy handling some stuff I’m back and since now new posts will appear rather regularly. Now it’s all downhill – I took seven out of ten exams in this exam period and did my bit where I should have done. Today, on Corpus Christi I decided not to pore over any books nor notes, plus in the afternoon I’m stranded at home as the procession’s route this year is my street and one of the altars has been put in my neighbours’ gate. Time to sum up what has happened recently.

1) The PZU IPO…
…has turned out to be roaring success, not only in terms of bridging the gap between government’s spending and revenues but also in many other facets. This has been the biggest IPO this year and the triumph of new approach to privatisation taken by PO-PSL government. Leaving out the protracting conflict with Eureko which had hampered the IPO for years, this time it was a really “civic privatisation”. The flotation was mostly aimed at individual buyers (I deliberately don’t use the word ‘investors’), each of them could subscribe for maximum 30 stock, 312.50 PLN per each, what totalled to over 9,000 PLN per subscriber. This means that beneficiaries of the operation were 250,000 ordinary people, not only big foreign companies which many times bought Polish enterprises for a song.
PZU was floated on Warsaw Stock Exchange on Wednesday, 12 May, I sold my stocks within three days for no less than 355 PLN. I have to say minister Grad offered 250,000 subscribers something what should not occur in economics – a free lunch or in simple words the chance to reap high profits by taking relatively low risk. I’m looking forward to a next free lunch which will be the Tauron IPO, you can subscribe for the stocks in the value up to 9,450 PLN by 18 June and sell them on 30 June at the earliest, according to current plans.

2) The tension on financial markets…
…was moderately relieved. Risky asset markets bottomed out robustly on 26 May from the levels unseen for many weeks. The problem of Greece has been swept under the carpet, fears of fiscal crises in Europe eased, nobody mentions the imminent burst of property bubble in China. However, I’m wary of the situation when I look at some indicators. Stock markets climbed giving some (not missed) opportunities for quick profits, crude oil prices also picked up but the Zloty remains week, EUR/USD is still in the doldrums and doesn’t give much hope for a recovery. I predict a sideways trend as the greed and fear seem to balance each other out.

3) Flood in Poland.
It seems 2010 is giving Poland a rough ride. The bogey of first months was a harsh winter that impacted economic rebound (though it was observed across the whole northern hemisphere), then Poles suffered a shock after 96 people, including high-rank state officials died in plane crash near Smolensk. May brought frequent rainfalls that led up to the biggest flood since 1997. Thousands of people lost their property, several died and the presidential campaign began to revolve around the natural disaster. Will we be wiser after the event? I suppose there’s no other way of preventing the losses than not giving planning permissions for housing and any other type of development in the areas than might be flooded.

4) The record of flight recorders from presidential TU-154 was released to the public two days ago. The Polish government decided it would be best if everyone could read those documents. The full transparency of the investigation is essential for one crucial reason – to curb conspiracy theories, even though they will never be rooted out and even though there will always be those who don’t believe and know better. The record seems to indicate it was pilots’ recklessness that caused a tragedy, some also point at Russian flight controller’s belated warnings. This story is rather unlikely to be unravelled, also because much of the content is indecipherable. The pilots hoped there would be no tragedy, realised the touchdown would be horrific, the second pilot screamed out the most popular Polish word at the very end of the drama. Many Poles will probably utter the same word on 4 July 2010.

5) Cycling to school remained in the realm of declarations. I have four lame excuses why I didn’t commute to school by bike: either I had to wear a suit, or someone gave me a lift and I went by car, or it was dark the time I was returning home, or the rain was pouring down or forecasters had predicted rainfalls. Nevertheless I liked the weather, at least it wasn’t hot, but yesterday’s humid air (combined with broken down air conditioning in my school’s new building) and subsequent storm were the last straw. I’d be longing for some moderately warm (around +18C) and sunny days…