Over recent years most European countries have experienced destructive precipitation events, many of which have generated floods resulting in the loss of lives and economic damage. Rather surprisingly, Europe has no common database for flood events, which continue to be monitored by different national and/or local authorities, with different criteria. In the light of this situation, the main aim of the present work is to propose a classification scheme for a European-level flood database, in which severe flood episodes are related to meteorological conditions and mesoscale settings.

The meteorological systems relating to the most severe events (22 events) over a five-year period (1992-1996) were analysed using Meteosat imagery and conventional meteorological data. Most of the observed events were related to extra tropical cyclone development. The results are discussed in terms of conceptual models currently used for extra tropical cyclones: the structure and dynamics of Atlantic cyclones can very often be interpreted in terms of well- known conceptual models, while characteristics of Mediterranean systems are not fully rendered by current descriptions. Our study underpins the need to improve the knowledge of Mediterranean systems, possibly introducing new conceptual models and/or refining the current ones.