‘A
devastating force’: how recent Mediterranean storms turned to tragedies
Atmospheric
machine-gun has fired storm after deadly storm at the region this year, leaving
a trail of widespread destruction
Ajit
Niranjan
Thu 26
Feb 2026 05.00 GMT
For
Andrés Sánchez Barea, in Spain, it was the fear that arose when water started
to spurt from plug sockets. For Nelson Duarte, in Portugal, it was the
helplessness that hit as violent winds smacked down trees and tore tiles from
roofs. For Amal Essuide, in Morocco, it was the reality that dawned when a
corpse was pulled onboard a boat in the flooded medina.
Each
moment of horror is a fragment of the destruction wrought by an atmospheric
machine-gun that in recent weeks has fired storm after storm at the western
Mediterranean. Scientists do not know if climate breakdown helped pull the
trigger, but research suggests it loaded the chamber with bigger bullets.
In
Grazalema, Spain’s wettest town, a year’s-worth of rain fell in a fortnight and
overloaded the karst aquifer beneath it. Water rushed into homes through
floors, walls and even electricity sockets. Authorities ordered everyone to
evacuate.
“I felt a
lot of fear,” said Sánchez Barea, a guesthouse owner whose home is one of
hundreds still in an exclusion zone. “At first we tried to get rid of the
water. Lots of people came to help, but we realised it was impossible.”
In
Leiria, one of four regions in Portugal where extreme rain broke records in
January, powerful winds added to the damage. Monte Real airbase logged
a top wind speed of 109mph (176km/h) before the station was hit and
measurements stopped. Storm Kristin took out electricity, internet, and
telephone service in the early hours of a morning that would soon turn deadly.
“It was
around this time that everything seemed to be falling apart,” said Duarte, a
beekeeper in Monte Real who lost half his hives. The house-rattling wind
trapped him and his family indoors, where they could do nothing but avoid
balconies and windows as they waited it out.
“The wind
became deafening and relentless, mixed with the sound of collapsing structures,
flying tiles, breaking trees and violently banging metal sheets,” Duarte said.
“The atmosphere was terrifying and conveyed the feeling the house might not
hold up.”
Duarte’s
house held, but others’ did not. Ricardo Teodósio, an industrial painter in
neighbouring Carvide, was fixing a garage roof with his father when it
collapsed on them. Injured, the older man walked 1.8 miles to a fire station to
get help for his son, who was trapped under the rubble. He was dead by the time
they arrived.
João
Lavos, the commander of the volunteer firefighters of Vieira de Leiria, said
Teodósio was one of two people to die in the Carvide-Leiria region that day. In
the space of 24 hours, the firefighters were deployed to 50 storm-related
events, 15 of which involved victims of accidents. “It was an unprecedented
situation that caused immense damage.”
Western
Europe has been battered by 16 rapid-fire storms this season due to a shift in
atmospheric currents that some scientists suggest will become more common as
the planet heats up.
While the
role that the climate crisis played in the formation of the storms is still
uncertain, early analysis from Climate Central found it made a marine heatwave
that supercharged the storms in early February 10 times more likely. On
Thursday, a study by World Weather Attribution (WWA), which uses established
methods but has not yet been sent for peer review, found carbon pollution made
the rains stronger and the floods worse.
In Safi,
the ceramics capital of Morocco, explosive mud waves shattered fragile pottery
stores when rain swamped the souk at the end of last year. Most of the 43
people killed in storms across the country since mid-December died in the
narrow, winding streets of its medina as water surged through.
“At
first, we didn’t think there would be big damages,” said Essuide, who watched
the chaos play out from the roof of the hotel she runs in the old town, and who
was picked up by a rescue team. “But after we entered the small boat, and they
found someone dead, then we realised it was a very hard thing. It was scary.”
Observational
data show the most extreme rainfall days in Spain, Portugal and Morocco unleash
one-third more water than they did in the 1950s, according to the WWA study,
though climate models paint a more mixed picture. The researchers attributed an
11% increase in rain in the northern study region to global heating, but the
effect on the southern study region was too uncertain to quantify 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 are not represented by the climate
models. However, other lines of evidence do suggest that climate change has
increased the amount of water available in that weather system to fall as
rain.”
Last
week, the EU’s official science advisers said Europe was failing to adapt to a
hotter planet and the more extreme weather it brings. In Portugal, Duarte said
emergency warnings failed to generate the necessary level of public alarm.
“Nobody
was prepared for such a devastating force,” he said, adding that the death toll
could have easily reached hundreds if the storm had struck during the day,
rather than at night. “It caught us all completely by surprise.”
In Spain,
meanwhile, people in Grazalema praised authorities for a timely evacuation. The
centre-left leadership of the centre-left town came to a swift agreement with
the centre-right authorities in Ronda, the town next door, which opened its
doors to neighbours seeking shelter.
“They did
the right thing,” said Mario Sánchez Coronel, who runs a textile shop in
Grazalema that flooded. “They acted under pressure, and it’s not easy to act
like that.”
In what
Sánchez Coronel described as a “miracle”, his wool blanket factory suffered
only minor flooding. He said he hoped to never see such rains again.
“It was
hard, because you think about what might happen next,” he said. “After the
‘bad’, will the ‘worst’ come?”
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário