The exceptional flood of July 2021 in central Europe impacted Belgium severely. This study aims to characterize rainfall amounts in Belgium from 13 to 16 July 2021 based on observational data (i.e., rain gauge data and a radar-based rainfall product). The spatial and temporal distributions of rainfall during the event aredescribed. In order to document such a record-breaking event as much as possible, the rainfall data are shared with the scientific community on Zenodo for further studies.

This paper describes the quality control procedures developed at the Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium (RMI) to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the wind observations performed within the Automatic Weather Stations network operated by RMI.

The paper discusses the derivation of precipitation climate maps over Belgium from daily observations available for the period 1981-2010. Several mapping approaches are compared in a cross-validation exercise. A large panel of climate maps are derived. In particular, the main spatio-temporal features of the annual cycle of rainfall in Belgium are extracted by principal component analysis (PCA).