Weather forecasting service Andalmet has apologised for causing ‘unnecessary alarm’ over Storm Charles after admitting it overestimated the severity of the winds expected to hit Andalucia.

In an open letter signed by its CEO Juan Carazo, the service acknowledged that its predictions had failed and said it understood why followers felt angry or misled.

‘We have to be honest. The forecasts failed. We failed,’ Carazo wrote.

The apology followed warnings of a potentially dangerous storm, with forecasts suggesting gusts of up to 120km/hr in parts of the region.

Carazo acknowledged that he had previously described the approaching system as a possible ‘tropical cyclone’ heading towards the Gulf of Cadiz.

He apologised to anyone who had experienced excessive fear as a result.

‘We have always tried to avoid spreading alarm, but on this occasion we did not interpret what we saw coming as it ultimately unfolded,’ he said.

Andalmet said the expected wind impacts had largely failed to materialise, with what had been described as a possible episode of explosive cyclogenesis falling short of predictions.

The service blamed uncertainty over the nature of the weather system, which had been variously described as a subtropical depression, a post-tropical cyclone and a system with multiple vortices.

Carazo also defended the decision to issue weather warnings based on the information available beforehand.

His letter recalled how state weather agency Aemet had issued orange alerts for strong winds and that emergency messages had been sent to mobile phones in affected areas.

According to Andalmet, forecasting models had indicated a potentially serious situation, even though the outcome differed from those projections.

In the letter, Carazo also criticised the wider forecasting response, arguing that computer models and human interpretation had both fallen short.

Storm Charles nevertheless brought disruption to Sevilla province, where firefighters reported more than 120 calls from the early hours of Wednesday. These included flooding, fallen trees, damaged cables and road accidents.

During the afternoon alone, the provincial fire service handled 64 alerts across 34 municipalities. In Santiponce, Guardia Civil officers rescued a woman from a car surrounded by floodwater.

Carazo ended his letter by promising to learn from the episode and avoid creating unnecessary alarm, even if that meant waiting until the day itself before making decisions about its coverage.

MeteoCadiz also offered an explanation for the forecasting errors, saying Charles presented an unusual challenge as a system that had shown subtropical characteristics before interacting with the larger Storm Bruna on its approach to the peninsula.

In a thread on X, the weather account said models had correctly predicted Charles’s path but overestimated its winds and possibly underestimated the rainfall.

It added that the most intense thunderstorms had veered towards northern Morocco.

‘The models managed to predict its track BUT exaggerated its winds and perhaps underestimated the rain,’ it wrote.

According to figures shared by MeteoCadiz, gusts reached 87km/hr in El Bosque, 78km/hr in Jerez, 73km/hr in Barbate and 72km/hr in Cadiz, falling well short of the strongest winds forecast.

Rainfall totals at the time of posting included 64mm in Grazalema, where rain was still falling, 59mm in Vejer, 56mm in Jimena and 44mm in Jerez.

The account acknowledged that confidence in the forecasts, including those issued by Aemet, had prompted emergency alerts and the suspension of classes. It argued that studying the episode could help improve predictions for similar weather systems.

‘I owed you these explanations,’ it told followers. ‘I couldn’t leave you without explaining what happened.’

Read more Andalucia news at the Spanish Eye.