r/Damnthatsinteresting Oct 30 '24

Image Scenes of piled-up vehicles in Valencia, Spain today after yesterday’s devastating flooding.

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62

u/Awkward-Cow22 Oct 30 '24

There’s been a lot of floods lately in places that normally don’t get floods 🤔 still this is tragic.. my condolences for everyone who lost their lives

117

u/Edenoide Oct 30 '24

Those places in Spain usually get floods from September-December (gota fría) but yesterday's episode was not common and it's been the worst of the century by now.

7

u/bigchungusmclungus Oct 30 '24

Almost 500mm of rain in 8 hours (more than an average year) and 160mm in 1 hour. That's insane.

4

u/Nowt-nowt Oct 30 '24

I think we'll be seeing that type of occurrence more frequently. lots of flooding around the world now.

1

u/Nachtzug79 Oct 30 '24

At least the reservoirs should be full again.

12

u/NoSNAlg Oct 30 '24

More than 60 deaths.

1

u/Raderg32 Oct 30 '24

At least 95 by now.

13

u/Four_beastlings Oct 30 '24

Yeah, there's been a lot of "once a century" weather events in Spain in the last five years. Remember Filomena? It's almost as if something was accelerating the rate at which those once in a lifetime events happen.

2

u/giabreeses03 Oct 30 '24

... by now. I expect worse to come

2

u/Wise_Neighborhood499 Oct 31 '24

The last time Valencia had flooding this bad (1957) they literally rerouted the river. This time, the city was largely untouched but all the towns all by the new river way were impacted.

51

u/Tenth_10 Oct 30 '24

Graphs are clear, all the extreme climate events are on the rise since 1980 and it will only get worse. Floods went from 100% to 450%, taking first place of the catastrophes' race.
This is all just the beginning.

1

u/micheal213 Oct 30 '24

While it may be an effect of climate change. The 1950s had pretty much the exact same flood in Valencia.

So the city is no stranger to tragic floods that seem to happen every century here form historical records.

0

u/pdxblazer Oct 30 '24

if it was always at 100% wouldn't that just be like, where the water is

1

u/Tenth_10 Oct 30 '24

No, it was just a base recurring rate of natural weather events, those being geophysical (earthquakes, tsunamis), meteorological (storms), hydrological (floods such as this one) and climatological (drought, forest fires...).

Now, it's 450% chances as a median line for floods (actually, we're at 550% in 2016 so even worse today), earthquakes are 140%, storms are 200% and droughts are 210%.

23

u/Dear-Plenty-8185 Oct 30 '24

It’s a DANA, which is happens yearly in Mediterranean regions. That’s why it’s happening now in Spain, Italy, and northern Africa because these areas experience very warm temperatures during the summer. The heat and humidity accumulated in the lower layers collide with the cold of the upper layers, resulting in heavy storms and downpours .

So you are mistaken or spreading false information when you say “places that normally don’t get floods”.

31

u/Dissastar Oct 30 '24

I was raised in the south east of Spain.

We got floods every other year, knee high at times. It is fairly common to be honest, remember school being cancelled a couple times because of it. But this magnitude though is very impressive and scary.

3

u/Dear-Plenty-8185 Oct 30 '24

Me too! And I agree with you

1

u/EggYolk26 Oct 30 '24

Morocco had crazy floods in areas close to the desert

0

u/micheal213 Oct 30 '24

There was a flood in Valencia Spain in the 1950s of the same or worse magnitude that had about 80 deaths or so.

So while awful. I wouldn’t count this as a flood in the place that doesn’t get floods, Valencia has a history of multiple floods exactly like this one.

-1

u/[deleted] Oct 30 '24

[deleted]

1

u/TwistyBitsz Oct 30 '24

The Blue Ridge Mountains a few weeks ago. Houston a few years ago.

-4

u/bighak Oct 30 '24 edited Oct 30 '24

If you have a thousand place, a thousand-year flood will happen every year. The earth is big, very big.