Overview
- Over the weekend heavy autumn storms produced flash floods across Catalonia, the Basque Country and Castilla‑La Mancha in Spain and struck Greek islands including Crete and Rhodes, leaving at least three confirmed dead in Spain and multiple fatalities and injuries reported in Greece.
- Catalan emergency services logged more than 5,000 calls and carried out over 1,400 deployments to rescue people from flooded homes and vehicles while regional authorities issued red alerts, suspended transport and canceled outdoor events.
- Meteorologists attributed the episode to a DANA, an isolated upper‑level low, that drew moisture from unusually warm Mediterranean waters and produced localized rainfall totals from more than 200 liters per square meter in parts of Spain to up to about 500 liters per square meter on Crete.
- The storms caused widespread infrastructure damage including flooded streets and basements, disrupted rail and air services, swollen rivers such as the Besòs, power outages and serious hits to agriculture and roads on Crete.
- Experts warned the very warm sea surface temperatures that followed a hot summer are amplifying these events and said the system could bring more heavy rain in the coming days with the risk of further flash floods and rare Mediterranean cyclone formation.