THE intense rains in eastern Spain due to DANA in ValenciaCastile-La Mancha and Andalusia caused deadly and destructive flash floods, costing the lives of at least 211 people, according to reports this Saturday morning. On October 29, 2024, more than 300 millimeters of rain fell in some areas of the province, according to the State Meteorological Agency (Aemet). In the city of Chiva, almost 500 millimeters fell in 8 hours. Here are the striking satellite images from DANA: NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) captured the devastating Valencia disaster.
THE storms concentrated on the Magro basins and Turia and, in the bed of the Poyo river, they produced walls of water that overflowed the banks, catching people off guard as they continued their daily lives: many returned from work on Tuesday afternoon, others came out.
The muddy water covered roads, railway tracks and entered homes and businesses in villages on the southern outskirts of the city of Valencia. Drivers had to take shelter on the roof of their cars.. Those who were at home climbed onto the roofs.
Spain’s national weather service said that in the hard-hit city of Chiva it rained more in ocho hours than in the previous 20 months, and called the deluge “extraordinary”.
When authorities sent the alert to cell phones warning of the severity of the phenomenon and asked people to stay home, people were already on the road, working or covered in water in low-lying areas or garages , which have become death traps.
The OLI (Operational terrestrial imager) from Landsat 8 captured this image (above) showing widespread flooding of urban and agricultural land in the coastal city of Valencia and its surroundings on October 30.
Sediment-laden waters also filled the Turia River channel, which flows into the Mediterranean Sea. The Albufera coastal wetlands, south of the city of Valencia. For comparison, the image below, also acquired by Landsat 8shows the same area at the end of October 2022.
The rains came from a high-altitude low-pressure weather system isolated from the jet stream, according to Aemet. These storm systems are known locally by the acronym DANA. or, more generally, by reducing losses. They occur where cold fronts meet warm, moist air masses, as occurs over the Mediterranean Sea. Storms can remain relatively stationary before dissipating, thereby amplifying their flooding potential. Below you can see an image from before DANA 2022 and just after.
Below you can see a comparison of two images from the Copernicus Sentinel2 satellite over the southern area of Valencia, Spain, captured on October 26 and 31, 2024, before and after the devastating floods that devastated the area on the night of October 29.
A screenshot of Sentinel 1the artificial satellite in polar orbit of the ESA of the Copernicus program intended for terrestrial and oceanic monitoring, shows below the dimension reached by the DANA floods during their passage in the province of Valencia, which leaves a still provisional assessment of 202 deaths.
