‘A devastating force’: how recent Mediterranean storms turned to tragedies | Extreme weather

For Andrés Sánchez Barea in Spain, fear struck when water started gushing from sockets. For Nelson Duarte in Portugal, it was despair as high winds toppled trees and ripped tiles off roofs. For Amal Essuite in Morocco, the truth emerged when a body was pulled onto a boat in the flooded Medina.

Each moment of terror is part of the devastation wrought by an atmospheric machine gun that has fired storm after storm across the western Mediterranean in recent weeks. Scientists don’t know if climate change helped pull the trigger, but research shows it fills the room with larger bullets.

In Grazalema, Spain’s wettest town, a year’s worth of rain in two weeks has overloaded the karst underground layer underneath. Water rushed into homes through floors, walls, and even electrical outlets. Authorities ordered everyone to evacuate.

“I felt a lot of fear,” said guesthouse owner Sánchez Barea, whose home is one of hundreds still in the exclusion zone. “At first we tried to get out of the water. Many people came to help, but we realized that it was impossible.”

Strong winds also increased the damage in Leiria, one of the four regions of Portugal where excessive rainfall broke records in January. Monte Real air base recorded a peak wind speed of 109 mph (176 km/h) before the station was hit and measurements were stopped. Storm Kristin knocked out power, internet, and phone service in the early morning hours; This situation would soon become fatal.

“Everything seemed to be falling apart around this time,” said Duarte, a beekeeper from Monte Real who lost half his hives. The wind shook the house, trapping him and his family inside; While they waited there they could do nothing except avoid balconies and windows.

“The wind became deafening and relentless, mixed with the sound of collapsing structures, flying tiles, breaking trees and violently striking metal sheets,” Duarte said. he said. “The atmosphere was scary and made it feel like the house wouldn’t hold up.”

Duarte’s house held up, but the others’ did not. Ricardo Teodósio, an industrial painter in neighboring Carvide, was repairing the roof of a garage with his father when the roof collapsed on them. The injured old man walked 2.8 kilometers to the fire station to help his son who was under the rubble. He was dead when they arrived.

João Lavos, commander of the Vieira de Leiria volunteer firefighters, said Teodósio was one of two people who died that day in the Carvide-Leiria area. Firefighters were deployed to 50 storm-related incidents in 24 hours; 15 of these involved accident victims. “It was an unprecedented situation that caused tremendous damage.”

Western Europe has been hit by 16 swift storms this season due to a shift in atmospheric currents that some scientists suggest will become more common as the planet warms.

While the role the climate crisis plays in the formation of storms is still unclear, early analysis from Climate Central found that it makes it 10 times more likely that a marine heat wave will supercharge storms in early February. On Thursday, a study by World Weather Attribution (WWA), which used established methods but has not yet been peer reviewed, found that carbon pollution is making rains stronger and floods worse.

In Safi, Morocco’s ceramics capital, explosive waves of mud shattered fragile pottery shops when rain flooded the market at the end of last year. Most of the 43 people who lost their lives in storms across the country since mid-December died due to overflow of water in the narrow and winding streets of Medina.

“We didn’t think there would be major damage at first,” said Essuide, who watched the chaos from the roof of the hotel he runs in the old city and was rescued by a rescue team. “But once we got into the little boat and found someone dead, we realized it was a very difficult thing. It was scary.”

Observational data show that the most extreme rainfall days in Spain, Portugal and Morocco released a third more water than in the 1950s, according to WWA research; But climate models paint a more mixed picture. Researchers attributed the 11% increase in precipitation in the northern study region to global warming, but the impact on the southern study region was too uncertain to be measured using probabilistic methods.

Clair Barnes, a scientist at Imperial College London and co-author of the study, said: “Trends in the region are mixed and not represented by climate models. But other evidence suggests that climate change is increasing the amount of water falling as rain in that weather system.”

Last week the EU’s official scientific advisers said Europe had failed to adapt to a warmer planet and the extreme weather it brings. In Portugal, Duarte said emergency warnings failed to create the necessary level of public alarm.

“No one was prepared for such a destructive force,” the official said, adding that the death toll could easily reach hundreds of people if the storm hit during the day instead of at night. “It took us all by complete surprise.”

Meanwhile, in Spain, people in Grazalema praised authorities for the timely evacuation. The center-left leadership of the center-left town quickly reached an agreement with center-right officials in the neighboring town of Ronda, which opened its doors to neighbors seeking shelter.

“They did the right thing,” said Mario Sánchez Coronel, who runs a textile store in Grazalema due to flooding. “They acted under pressure and it is not easy to act like that.”

In what Sánchez Coronel described as a “miracle”, there was only a minor flood at the wool blanket factory. He said he hopes to never see rain like this again.

“It was hard because you think about what could happen next,” he said. “After ‘bad’ will ‘worst’ come?”