Torrential rains and floods have left at least 11 dead and 9 missing since Friday, September 6 in southern Morocco, a climatic phenomenon “exceptional” which also affected neighbouring Algeria, where two people swept away by the waves were searched for on Sunday afternoon.
The violent storms and floods have left 11 dead, 7 of them in the province of Tata, 740 kilometres south-east of Rabat, 2 in Tiznit (south-west) and 2 in Errachidia (south-east), including one of unspecified foreign nationality, said the spokesman for the Ministry of the Interior, Rachi El Khalfi, according to a provisional assessment. In addition, nine people are missing in the areas of Tata, Errachidia and Taroudant (south-west).
Heavy rains accompanied by floods and flooding have affected seventeen regions and provinces of Morocco since Friday, some of which are usually semi-arid. “The volume of precipitation recorded in two days is equivalent to what is normally experienced in these regions during an entire year”The ministry spokesman said. He also announced the collapse of 40 houses across the country and damage to 93 roads, as well as water, electricity and telecommunications networks.
In Algeria, a similarly violent rain front has hit desert areas such as the Sahara, according to images posted on social media. According to Algerian civil protection, two people are being searched for after being swept away by the waters in Tamanrasset, some 2,000 kilometres south of Algiers, and in El Bayadh, 600 kilometres south-west of Algiers.
“It hasn’t rained like this for ten years”
Civil protection first announced the disappearance of a person in Tamanrasset and the death in Illizi, 700 kilometres south-east of Algiers. The state agency also carried out several rescues of families trapped by overflowing rivers, in particular in Illizi and Béchar (south-west).
Since Friday, the south and south-east of Morocco, as well as certain areas of the Atlas, have been affected. “due to an extremely unstable tropical air mass, due to the exceptional position of the intertropical front over the south of the country”“The weather is very bad,” Lhoussaine Youabd, spokesman for Morocco’s general meteorological directorate, told AFP. “The humid tropical air masses moved northwards, meeting cold air masses, which caused the formation of unstable and violent clouds”he stressed.
These unusual conditions for these regions caused “Strong storms and heavy rainfall caused river flooding” and flooding, the official continued.
In the past 24 hours, the Ouarzazate region, 500 kilometres south of Rabat, received 47 mm of rain in three hours, and up to 170 mm in Tagounite, near Zagora, not far from the Algerian border, according to Morocco’s meteorological services. “It hasn’t rained so much for ten years”Ouarzazate resident Omar Gana told AFP.
Morocco is suffering from a severe water shortage after six consecutive years of drought, which had reduced the level of the dams to less than 28% by the end of August. The rains were accompanied by strong winds, which reached 100 km/h in Ouarzazate or 76 km/h in Marrakech, where they caused “an optical phenomenon that gives the sky an orange tint”.
