(Bloomberg) -- Spain’s national weather forecaster downgraded an extreme rain alert for the region of Valencia, where more than 200 people died in floods last month, while flagging a record downpour in Granada.
Aemet cut its alert for some towns in Valencia from red to orange, as it lowered its rain forecast to as much as 100 millimeters (4 inches) in 12 hours, from an earlier projection of 180 millimeters. At the same time, the forecaster reported that on Wednesday the city of Granada in Andalusia broke a rainfall record that’s stood for 38 years.
Andalusia also moved to an orange alert on Thursday. On Wednesday, schools in that region, along with others in Catalonia and Valencia, were shut and residents told to seek shelter.
At the end of October, a type of storm known in Spain as “danas,” triggered the country’s worst natural disaster in more than six decades and devastated 75 towns in the Valencia region. Those extreme storms are likely to become more common as climate change increases the frequency and intensity of heat waves, with record temperatures in the Mediterranean Sea strengthening their impact.
Thousands of soldiers, firefighters and police officers have been working in Valencia since the flash-floods of Oct. 29 to help clean up the affected towns and cities. Many of the worst-hit places received little or even no rain, but suffered from the mudslides and water streaming down rivers and creeks from areas further inland. Many victims were caught in their houses, as the floods rose to as high as two meters.
--With assistance from Eamon Akil Farhat.
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