‘A devastating force’: how recent storms turned into tragedies across the western Mediterranean | extreme weather

For Andrés Sánchez Barea, in Spain, it was the fear that arose when water began to spray from cork socks. For Nelson Duarte, in Portugalwas the helplessness that struck as violent winds toppled trees and tore tiles from roofs. For Amal Essuide, in Morocco, this was the reality that set in when a body was pulled aboard a boat in the flooded medina.

Every moment of horror is a fragment of the destruction wrought by an atmospheric machine gun that has been unleashing storm after storm on the western Mediterranean in recent weeks. Scientists don’t know if climate collapse helped pull the trigger, but research suggests that it charged the room with larger bullets.

In Grazalema, Spain’s wettest town, a year’s worth of rain fell in two weeks, overflowing the karst aquifer below. 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 house is one of hundreds still in an exclusion zone. “We first tried to get rid of the water. Many people came to help, but we realized 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 Air Base recorded a top wind speed of 109mph (176km/h) before the station was hit and measurements were stopped. Storm Kristin took out electricity, internet and phone service in the early hours of a morning that would soon turn deadly.

“It was around this time that everything seemed to fall 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 expected.

“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 frightening and conveyed the feeling that the house might not last.”

Duarte’s house kept, but not others’. Ricardo Teodósio, an industrial painter in neighboring Carvide, was fixing a garage roof with his father when it collapsed on them. Injured, the older man walked two miles to a fire station to get help for his son, who was trapped under the debris. He was dead when they arrived.

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

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

While the role the climate crisis played in shaping the storms is still uncertain, early analysis from Climate Central found that it created a marine heat wave that made the storms 10 times more likely in early February. 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 rain stronger and the floods worse.

In Safi, the ceramic capital of Moroccoexplosive mud waves crushed fragile pottery shops when rains lashed the souk at the end of last year. Most of the 43 people who have died in storms across the country since mid-December died in the narrow, winding streets of its medina as water rushed through.

“At first we didn’t think there would be much damage,” says Essuide, who saw the chaos unfold from the roof of the hotel she runs in the old city, and who was picked up by a rescue team. “But after we got into the little boat, and they 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 release one-third more water than they did in the 1950s, according to the WWA study, although climate models paint a more mixed picture. The researchers attributed an 11% increase in rainfall in the northern study region to global warming, but the effect on the southern study region was too uncertain to quantify using probability 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 the climate models. However, other evidence suggests 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 advisors said Europe is failing to adapt to a warmer planet and the more extreme weather it brings. In Portugal, Duarte said emergency alerts did not generate the necessary level of public alarm.

“Nobody was prepared for hundreds of such a devastating force,” he said, adding that the death toll could easily have reached had the storm struck during the day, rather than at night. “It completely surprised us all.”

In Spain, people in Grazalema meanwhile praised authorities for a timely evacuation. The center-left leadership of the town quickly reached an agreement with the center-right authorities in Ronda, the town next door, which opened its doors to neighbors seeking refuge.

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

In what Sánchez Coronel described as a “miracle”, his woolen blanket factory experienced only minor flooding. He said he hoped to never see such rain again.

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