The large amount of floods and landslides that occurred on 5-16 February 1979 in Portugal corresponds to a major hydro-geomorphologic event according to the comprehensive DISASTER database. This event is driven by atmospheric forcing at different time scales that have not been, as yet, studied in detail. Here we show that the precipitation period of February 1979 has produced several multiday accumulated precipitation events, over the Portuguese continental territory, ranking amongst the top 10 events observed between 1950 and 2008. Additionally, most of the precipitation on this event occurs in days with atmospheric circulation dominated by “wet” circulation weather types (CWTs), i.e. cyclonic (C), west (W) or southwest (SW) types.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
