Safi, 14 December 2025: the rain, the terrain and the wadi

The Safi station recorded 35 mm between 1 pm and 7 pm, 19 mm of it in a single hour, from 4 to 5 pm, under the storm. The head of the region spoke of more than 60 mm in three hours over the medina: a station sees only one point of a storm. The map tries both.

Rain falling on the Abda plateau, up to 35 km inland, drains to a single outlet: the mouth of the Chaâba wadi, below the medina. The terrain outlines a catchment of about 570 km². With the station's rain, the model sends almost nothing down: at most 5 m³/s at the city entrance. The plateau keeps its water.

Now let the storm described over the medina fall: 60 mm in three hours, from 4 to 7 pm, over the whole catchment. The water gathers in the gullies, then in the wadi. It reaches the edge of Safi around 18:40, three hours after the peak rain, and the wadi carries 103 m³/s there at 23:00, still rising.

Up close, the same simulation. The wadi runs down its ravine to the medina and the sea, below Ksar el Bahr. The arrows follow the current; their length shows its speed, more than 3 m/s in the ravine. The model cannot see the medina's lanes: it shows where the water goes, not every street it filled.

Click a blue spot on the map: the probe gives the water depth at the time shown, the speed of the current, the peak and when it came, and the curve for the whole evening. The playback bar moves time forward or back.