An orange weather alert is in place across the Balearic Islands as a deadly storm, which has left more than 140 dead in mainland Spain and has devastated the Valencia region, is heading towards the hit holiday hotspot.
Vice President and Economic Minister of the Balearic government, Antoni Costa, is urging people to exercise “maximum caution” with heavy rain forecast.
The deluge of rain is expected to reach the archipelago on Friday, with 50 litres of downpours per square metre forecast.
While calling November 1 a “complicated day”, the deputy spokesman of the territorial delegation of the State Meteorological Agency (Aemet) in the Balearics, Bernat Amengual, called for calm.
Although the downpours are not forecast to be as bad as the fatal flooding’s in Valencia, Aemet has activated the orange alert for heavy rain in Majorca and Menorca.
Amengual ensured the weather front was being closely monitored. Those in Majorca are urged to be more vigilant, with the island predicted to be hit first, according to the weather models forecast on Wednesday.
“We don’t know how fast the DANA [Depresión Aislada en Niveles Altos – high altitude, isolated depression] will move; we have to keep a close eye on it, because although it is weakening, it is still active”, warned Amengual.
At the moment, he said that it is not clear when the DANA – the phenomenon which has brought torrential rain to the south and east of Spain – will leave the region, “as it will continue to move over Spain for the next 10 days”.
Majorca is also forecast rain on Saturday and Sunday.
This comes just hours after nine bodies were found in a garage in the La Torre district of Valencia.
Over 1,100 soldiers from Spain’s emergency response units have been deployed to areas hit by the downpour, scrambling to find individuals potentially trapped in vehicles or homes.
The flood water has left a trail of utter devastation in their wake, with cars piled on top of one another, trees uprooted, and power lines downed.
The fatal flooding even tore down a bridge in just seconds, destroying everything in its path.
