Rain Hammers Streets in Alicante Village During Historic Overnight Deluge

Torrential rain poured down on empty streets in this small village in Alicante’s Marina Alta district in the early hours of Monday, October 19, as the region endured one of the wettest nights in its recorded history.

Local resident Elio Javier Alsina Rojas filmed two clips from street level shortly after 2 a.m. They show thick sheets of rain falling through the glare of the streetlights, with runoff streaming down the road and along the gutters past rows of parked cars. Nobody can be seen outside, and the only sound is the roar of the downpour. “It’s still pouring in Benidoleig, Alicante,” he wrote when he posted the footage.

The storm, part of a DANA, or isolated upper-level low, battering eastern Spain, dropped extraordinary amounts of rain on the area. Weather stations in the regional amateur network Avamet recorded more than 700 liters per square meter in parts of the Marina Alta from Sunday afternoon, with almost 500 falling overnight before 8 a.m. One station at Forna, in the municipality of l’Atzúbia, logged 718 liters per square meter in just over 24 hours, 550 of them between 10 p.m. and 8 a.m.

A few hours after the footage was filmed, the River Girona burst its banks in nearby Els Poblets at 6:21 a.m. and threatened El Verger. Cars were swept away and piled up, residents were trapped in their homes, and local councils urged people to stay indoors. The scenes brought back memories of the devastating Girona flood of 2007. The neighboring town of Pego was cut off, emergency services handled more than 700 incidents across the Marina Alta and La Safor, and several regional roads were closed, including the CV-700, CV-723, CV-727 and CV-747.

Across the Valencia region, the storm has been blamed for three deaths, two in Oliva and one in Sagunto, and residents in 145 municipalities were told to stay at home while the rain continued.