Catastrophic Floods in Spain: Cause and Impact

• Flash floods in eastern Spain caused by heavy downpours swept away almost everything in their path, trapping people in vehicles, homes, and businesses.
• Authorities recovered 217 bodies, with 211 in the eastern Valencia region, and are searching for at least 89 people confirmed to be unaccounted for.
• The ground floors of thousands of homes have been ruined, and bodies are still waiting to be identified inside washed-away vehicles or trapped in underground garages.
• The storms concentrated over the Magro and Turia river basins and the Poyo canal, producing walls of water that overflowed riverbanks.
• The floods occurred when authorities sent alerts to mobile phones, many of whom were already on the road, working, or covered in water in low-lying areas or underground garages.
• Scientists suggest two possible connections to human-caused climate change: warmer air holding and then dumping more rain, and possible changes in the jet stream that spawn extreme weather.
• The immediate cause of the flooding is a cut-off lower-pressure storm system that migrated from an unusually wavy and stalled jet stream.
• The extreme weather event came after Spain battled with prolonged droughts in 2022 and 2023, and experts believe that drought and flood cycles are increasing with climate change.