Medárd daily belief: a Hungarian researcher proved that it is true

According to popular belief, if on June 8, On Medárd’s day it rains, then it will continue to rain for the next forty days. However, if it doesn’t rain in Medárd, forty days of drought can be expected.

What to expect this year? The National Meteorological Service (OMSZ) is official based on your forecast downpours, thunderstorms, and flash floods may also occur in the country until Thursday midnight.

On Wednesday and Thursday, the atmospheric conditions will be suitable for the formation of thunderstorms throughout the country, they may occur several times over a given point. On both days, rain is more likely to occur in the afternoon and evening hours.

The danger of flash floods is greatest in the central counties on Wednesday, on Thursday in the region of the Northern Central Mountains, but there may be downpours elsewhere. Temporary strengthening of the wind and small ice in the vicinity of the thunderstorms cannot be ruled out either.

Medárd would not be a good weather forecaster

The domestic scientific workshop investigating climate change, the One and a half degrees its researchers found out how well the popular belief on Medárd day holds up in the light of the 1971-2022 Hungarian precipitation data.

Little Anna, meteorologist, scientific associate of the Department of Meteorology of Eötvös Loránd University finally came to the conclusion in his investigation that according to the Hungarian precipitation data of the past 52 years, the Medárd day popular prediction does not really hold its place. Based on the data from 1971-2022, the saying was verified in less than half of the cases in most of our country.

Medárd’s daily belief can be justified in a few smaller areas: for example, it has been implemented in a higher proportion next to Békéscsaba or Zsámbék, but this does not constitute a national trend and it is also not possible to draw far-reaching conclusions from it.

However, heavy precipitation increased in the forty days after Medárd: in 1997–2022, there were more days with precipitation exceeding 10 mm compared to the period 1971–1996. The increase can be seen primarily in the central areas of the Great Plain and in the northeastern part of Transdanubia.

The trend is also supported by model simulations for the future, according to which we can expect more extreme precipitation activity in the coming decades. The annual average amount will not change significantly according to the climate models, but at the same time, there will be more extreme, high-precipitation days, when large amounts of rain fall at the same time within a short period of time. While parallel to this, consecutive dry periods are becoming longer.

And this changed distribution can lead to the development of droughts, flash floods, and landslides, which is not favorable for either agriculture or infrastructure, warns the Másfélfok Medárdnapi study.

122 millimeters of rain fell on Kékestető in one day

The daily rainfall record was broken on Tuesday: 122 millimeters of rain fell on Kékestető in one day, the National Meteorological Service wrote. In June, it rains 60-80 millimeters on average, but now, from the precipitation sources arriving in a series, the amount reaching or exceeding the monthly precipitation amount was measured at several measuring stations, in some cases in one or two hours. On Tuesday, the measuring stations of the meteorological service registered more than 100 millimeters of rain in Baja (101.7 millimeters) and Kékestető (111.3 millimeters), but one of their detectors measured 122 millimeters in Kékestetó, breaking the daily rainfall record. The old record, 120 millimeters, was measured in 1951 in Homokszentgyörgy-Mariettapuszta in Somogy County.