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A DANA storm (Isolated Depression at High Levels) has hit Spain hard this week, drowning parts of the extreme north and southern coasts with more rain in one day than has been seen for the entire month. But believe it or not, even with this deluge, spring 2023 will go down in history as the driest of all time in Spain.

 

This is according to Rubén del Campo, spokesperson for the State Meteorological Agency (Aemet), who explained that the Levante area of Spain, which broadly includes regions such as Murcia, Valencia and Andalucía, has been hardest hit by the storms.

 

Large parts of the southeast of the country, he said, accumulated between 108 litres and 130 litres of water per square metre between 9am on Monday May 22 and noon on Tuesday May 23, an astonishing figure considering this same area has been parched by drought all year.

 

In Cartagena, a single downpour at dawn on Tuesday deposited 61 litres per square metre of rain in just one hour. Daily rain records have also been broken in several other towns in the Region of Murcia, the Valencian Community and Almeria.

 

“There are very abundant rainfalls and they far exceed the normal value for the entire month of May,” del Campo stressed.

 

 

The storms are set to continue for the rest of the week, subsiding somewhat on Thursday before picking up again for the weekend but despite this, the period from March 1 to May 21 has been the driest since records began in 1961, with just 48 litres of rain per square metre overall.

 

We have to go back to the spring of 1995 to find the nearest contender, and this year was still far wetter with 86 litres of rain. The average for a normal season is 180 litres per square metre, so even with the recent storms, 2023 is still considered a “very dry” spring.

 

Sadly, the dreary weather forecast will do little to alleviate the drought, in the expert’s opinion, although the rain will certainly help water levels somewhat in the reservoirs along the Mediterranean coast. However, in Spain as a whole, between October 1 last year and May 21 of 2023, just 360 litres of water per square metre has been collected, compared to the usual 504 litres.

 

This is a disappointing 28% below normal.

 

 

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