Rare March ‘Medicane’ Sweeps the Mediterranean, Killing Teen Rescuer in Tripoli

The streets of Tripoli were meant to be quiet for a municipal holiday. Instead, they filled with chest-high water and stalled cars as rain hammered the Libyan capital and winds toppled power lines.

On the eastern edge of the city, in the Tajoura district, a teenage boy waded into the brown current to help motorists trapped in their vehicles, according to local authorities. He was electrocuted when a live cable fell into the floodwater. Officials later described him as a “national hero.”

The storm that killed him was the same system that, days earlier, sent 13-meter waves crashing into Spain’s Balearic Islands and triggered red-level weather alerts across northeastern Iberia. By the time it reached the central Mediterranean, meteorologists say, it had morphed into a rare phenomenon: a March “medicane,” a small but tropical-like cyclone in a sea better known for winter windstorms than hurricane-style eyes.

The system carried different names in different places. It was Storm Samuel to weather services in Andorra and Spain, Jolina on Central European charts, and part of the “Al Hussom Storm” period in Egyptian forecasts. Its shifting identities—and its transformation from a cold-core low to a warm-core cyclone—are drawing scrutiny from forecasters trying to understand what it means for a warming Mediterranean.

From Atlantic-style low to tropical-like core

The storm began as a routine but vigorous Atlantic-style low.

On March 14, a frontal depression formed over the western Mediterranean. The next day, the national meteorological service of Andorra named it Samuel under a regional storm-naming scheme shared with Spain and Portugal. As the system deepened, Spain’s state weather agency issued high-level warnings for wind and coastal hazards in Catalonia and the Balearic Islands.

Over the following 48 hours, Samuel produced what Spanish forecasters described as hurricane-force gusts in exposed high terrain. In parts of Girona province, winds topped 140 kilometers an hour. Offshore buoys registered waves of 12 to 13 meters in the western Mediterranean, prompting red alerts along sections of the Catalan and Balearic coasts.

Emergency services in northeastern Spain reported power outages, road closures and multiple calls for help from motorists and coastal residents. Authorities said at least four people were injured by flying debris and fallen trees. There were no reported deaths.

As the low moved eastward into the central Mediterranean around March 17, it entered the naming domain of the Free University of Berlin, which assigns names to high and low pressure systems over Central Europe. On German charts, the same circulation appeared as Jolina—another clue to the fragmented way Europe labels its storms.

It was over the central Mediterranean that the system took on a different character.

Satellite imagery from the Meteosat Third Generation spacecraft and surface wind measurements from the ASCAT scatterometer showed the storm shrinking and consolidating. Deep thunderstorms wrapped around a tight center. Cloud-top temperatures cooled, indicating strong convection. By late March 17, the storm displayed a small, eye-like feature and a symmetric ring of clouds more reminiscent of a tropical cyclone than a sprawling winter low.

At the same time, numerical weather models indicated a shallow warm core in the mid-levels of the atmosphere and a partial break from the frontal boundaries that had fed the system over Iberia. Sea-surface temperatures under the storm hovered between 15 and 17 degrees Celsius—far cooler than the 26 degrees typically associated with hurricane development, but within the lower range observed for Mediterranean tropical-like cyclones when cold air aloft creates strong instability.

Surface wind data suggested sustained winds near 40 knots (about 70 to 75 kilometers an hour) over open water, with stronger gusts in squalls. That placed the storm in the tropical-storm or subtropical-storm range by global standards, though no official tropical classification was issued.

Several European meteorological centers nevertheless referred to it as a medicane, shorthand for Mediterranean tropical-like cyclone, a hybrid category that has no dedicated regional hurricane center and no standardized warning protocol.

Landfall in Libya, fatal flood in Tripoli

By the early hours of March 18, the compact storm had moved southeastward and made landfall on Libya’s northern coast after brushing offshore oil and shipping lanes.

Libya’s National Meteorological Centre had warned of severe weather in the western part of the country, particularly around Tripoli. The Tripoli municipality declared a local holiday as heavy rain and strong winds hit the capital, local media reported. Streets in low-lying districts flooded rapidly, turning underpasses and ring roads into temporary canals.

Emergency services fielded dozens of distress calls from drivers caught in rising water. Video posted online showed vehicles partially submerged and residents moving through muddy floodwaters on foot.

In Tajoura, a coastal district east of the city center, a teenage volunteer went into the water to help people escape trapped cars, according to statements from municipal officials. He was killed when a live power line fell into the flooded street. Officials said he died “while attempting to rescue people,” calling him a hero and urging others to heed official instructions to stay indoors during such storms.

Libya—still recovering from years of conflict and from catastrophic flooding caused by Storm Daniel in 2023—has struggled to upgrade drainage systems and early-warning networks. Even moderate storms can overwhelm urban infrastructure, turning intense but relatively short-lived rainfall into life-threatening flash floods.

Egypt’s “Al Hussom” warnings: wind, dust and rough seas

East of Libya, the same broader low-pressure system contributed to a period of unstable weather that Egypt’s press and meteorological officials referred to as the Al Hussom Storm.

On March 14, the Egyptian Meteorological Authority (EMA) issued a nationwide alert warning of “strong winds across most of the country, accompanied by sandstorms and reduced horizontal visibility.” The authority cautioned that the stormy period would bring thunderstorms and heavy rain to coastal areas and parts of the Nile Delta.

In subsequent bulletins, EMA warned of “unstable weather” expected to extend into the week of Eid al-Fitr, with “rain of varying intensity, sometimes thundery” over northern governorates and “active sand- and dust-laden winds” that could reduce visibility below 1 kilometer, especially in Upper Egypt and desert roads.

Along the Mediterranean coast around Alexandria and Marsa Matrouh, forecasters projected wave heights of 2.5 to 3 meters, advising that navigation would be disrupted. In the Red Sea and Gulf of Suez, EMA said waves could reach 4 meters, posing risks to smaller vessels and offshore operations.

Local media in Alexandria reported episodes of street flooding during downpours. In Cairo and other cities, health officials urged residents with respiratory illnesses to limit time outdoors and wear masks during dust storms.

While the compact, eye-like core of the medicane phase remained focused farther west, the broader circulation’s mix of wind, dust and rain underscored the multiple hazards these hybrid storms can generate across large areas.

Why forecasters are watching this storm

Elsewhere in the central Mediterranean, national weather services in Italy, Malta and Greece issued warnings for rough seas, strong winds and heavy showers as the storm passed to the south and east. Season summaries list those countries among the areas affected by Samuel and Jolina, though as of late March there were no widely reported fatalities or large-scale damage directly tied to the system in those states.

What makes this storm notable, forecasters say, is less the absolute damage—serious but localized—than the timing and the context.

Most documented medicanes have formed between September and January, when Mediterranean sea-surface temperatures are highest. March events are rarer. At the same time, the 2025–26 European windstorm season has set a record for the number of named storms in the western Mediterranean sector, with Samuel marked as the 18th.

Scientists caution against drawing direct cause-and-effect lines between any single weather event and long-term climate change without formal attribution studies. But research over the past decade indicates that as the Mediterranean warms, tropical-like storms that do form may be able to tap more energy and produce heavier rainfall, even if their overall frequency does not increase.

Hybrid systems like Samuel are also testing the limits of Europe’s storm-naming and warning architecture. Unlike the Atlantic and eastern Pacific—where the U.S. National Hurricane Center provides a single authoritative voice on tropical cyclones—the Mediterranean is covered by a patchwork of national meteorological agencies and informal scientific networks. One low can carry multiple official names as it crosses from one naming domain to another, while local traditions—such as Egypt’s seasonal storm names—overlay technical terminology.

For residents trying to make decisions as a storm approaches, that can be confusing.

From a physical standpoint, however, the name matters far less than the underlying risk: high winds, torrential rain, dangerous seas, and in some cases dust and poor air quality.

In Spain, Samuel passed as a severe but largely manageable emergency, buffered by robust early-warning systems and infrastructure. In Tripoli, the same storm turned a day off into a day of mourning and again highlighted how vulnerable parts of North Africa remain to intense rain and coastal hazards.

As data from satellites and ground stations are analyzed in the coming months, meteorologists expect Samuel to become one of the best-documented late-winter medicanes on record, helping refine definitions and improve forecasts. For people living along the crowded shores of the Mediterranean, it is another sign that the region’s storm season is no longer neatly confined to autumn—and that even modest storms can have outsized consequences when they arrive in the wrong place at the wrong time.