Extreme weather conditions in Spain have cost at least 72 lives, including four children.
Dozens of people are missing and 155,000 homes have been cut off from electricity after the deluge on October 30. Phone networks have collapsed and many roads left impassable.
The Spanish Government has declared three days of mourning.
Spain was struck by a DANA, which stands for Depresión Aislada en Niveles Altos, commonly referred to as “gota fría“, an isolated depression.
This weather event occurs when a low-pressure system becomes detached from the general atmospheric circulation, particularly at higher altitudes, leading to erratic and often intense weather patterns.
A DANA forms when a section of the jet stream, which typically flows from west to east, becomes cut off and creates a closed low-pressure area. This isolation allows the storm to move independently, sometimes resulting in retrograde motion, east to west.
The core of a DANA consists of cold air, which can lead to significant temperature contrasts when it interacts with warmer air at lower levels, especially over the Mediterranean Sea. This temperature gradient is crucial for the development of severe weather.
When the cold air meets warm, moist air from the Mediterranean, it can trigger rapid convection, resulting in intense thunderstorms and heavy rainfall. These storms can produce torrential rains that often lead to flooding and other severe weather impacts
The mayor of a small town in the region of Valencia, Consuelo Tarazona, described the situation in her municipality as “Dantesque”, saying she had never seen anything like it in her life.
“This is a disaster,” Tarazona, mayor of Horno de Alcedo, told broadcaster RTVE.
“The whole town is flooded. Cars have been swept away, there’s a lorry in the middle of the highway. Walls have fallen, fences have fallen, everything has fallen.”
Tarazona said alerts for a flood only came out about half an hour before the downpour started.
“The second alert when we had already gone up to the upper floors out of fear because the water had already reached one and a half metres, and the third one came this morning,” she said.
Spain has been promised support from the European Union.
“Europe is ready to help,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in a social media post.
She reaffirmed the message in an interview with reporters later on October 30, saying the EU’s sympathies were with the flood victims and the rescue crews who were desperately trying to find the missing.
“What we are seeing is devastating; entire villages are covered with mud, people seeking refuge on trees and cars swept away by the fury of the waters,” von der Leyen said.
Hours after torrential rains battered parts of Spain, rescue teams have been urgently searching the hardest-hit areas.
“This is an extremely challenging situation,” said Spain’s Minister of Territorial Policy, Ángel Víctor Torres, adding that an inability to confirm the exact number of missing individuals underscored the scale of the disaster.
Defence minister Margarita Robles said more than 1,000 troops, supported by helicopters, had been mobilised in response to this “unprecedented event.”
Videos on social media have captured police and rescue crews using helicopters to airlift residents from their homes and rubber rafts to reach drivers stranded on car rooftops.
