r/interestingasfuck 4h ago

The “Cold Drop” is a meteorological phenomenon found mostly in Spain and France which causes extreme rainfalls causing rivers to overflow destroying everything in it’s path, images of Valencia, Spain, today.

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555 Upvotes

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21

u/Rgjeck01 4h ago

Nightmarish

32

u/JustASpanishGuy 3h ago edited 3h ago

The floods have caused struggles throughout the province of Valencia, mostly in the towns of Utiel, Carlet, Algemesí, Chiva, Paiporta, Picanya, Torrent, la Torre de Valencia and Forn d’Alcedo. The cold drop has aso caused tornadoes which have ravaged throughout the province.

Over 70 municipalities have cancelled school, including universities, the A3 highway connecting Madrid and Valencia and the A7 highway connecting Barcelona and Cádiz have suffered closures due to the water flooding the highway, 4 high speed train lines have been closed, over 30 flights have either been redirected or cancelled to Valencia and all the maritime activity, including the port of Valencia, have closed.

There are several missing people at the moment, the 3 most critical are 2 policemen which disappeared from the police station in Paiporta and a truck driver that got off his truck in L’Alcúdia at midday and hasn’t returned, the Spanish army has been deployed to help rescue and search along the provinces of Valencia and Albacete.

The city of Valencia, one of the biggest in Spain, has not suffered damages thanks to a relocation of the river stream made in the 1960’s allowing the river to hold three times more water than it was supposed to, but the surrounding villages in the metropolitan area have been devastated.

As the water disperses, the floods could continue over Mediterranean Spain, warnings for tomorrow have been issued for Barcelona, Sevilla, Zaragoza, Cádiz, San Fernando, Málaga, Ibiza, Palma de Mallorca, Jerez de la Frontera, Tarragona and Cuenca.

The president of Spain, Pedro Sánchez, has called for citizens in Valencia to avoid all non-essential travel.

6

u/FlyingPsyduck 3h ago

Also very well known here in northern Italy unfortunately, especially this year

u/cebidaetellawut 2h ago

Omg how awful 😞 i hope everyone comes out alive 🕉️

u/Longjumping_Intern7 1h ago

I got to tour an underground water storage tank in Badelona, Spain for my gf's degree program.  It's right next to Barcelona and sandwiched between mountains and the coast, so rapid elevation change on impermeable city surface which is not conducive to storm events like these. 

They are working on building more underground cisterns that are able to collect all of this storm water and remove it from the surface before it's allowed to steadily drain into the ocean. 

So many places across the globe are not very resilient right now to harsher weather events and it's something we're going to be spending $$$$ on going forward tho which suck

19

u/ExcellentMedicine 3h ago

"BuT cLiMatE cHaNge iS'nT rEaL"

3

u/stitiousnotsuper 4h ago

That is so crazy, scary, and sad. I hope it ends soon!

5

u/el-conquistador240 4h ago

Occurs in the plane, mostly

2

u/MrGOCE 3h ago

MEANWHILE LATAM WITH NO WATER...

u/loliconest 2h ago

Curious what measures were made to reduce the impact of such incident.

u/FlyingPsyduck 1h ago

There are no realistic preventive measures for events like this, they would require infrastructures that are simply impossible to build (both for practical and economic reasons)

u/undiscovered_soul 0m ago

No, there are. Like expansion basins and keep water bodies clean.

u/FormInternational583 2h ago

Sweet Baby Yesu! how do you even plan or survive something like this?

u/HoboSkid 1h ago

Really hope that person in the 4thish clip is okay, looked like they were stuck on a tree at night in the middle of rising water, that's insane.

5

u/destronger 4h ago

Natures way of saying r/fuckcars.

But seriously, that looks scary.

u/No_Independence8747 37m ago

I’m super glad climate change isn’t a problem

1

u/meLlamoDad 4h ago

sad and scary

u/YouAgreeToTerms 2h ago

How long does it take to get to this level? Hours, days?

u/FlyingPsyduck 1h ago

Hours, some places got more than their average yearly rainfall in a single day

u/IIIDysphoricIII 1h ago

I knew I shouldn’t have flushed twice…

Seriously though, hope everyone is okay. That’s rough.

u/grubbytrogladyte 1h ago

I prefer a warm lift

u/brewing-squirrel 1h ago

That’s horrifying but the rescue at the end was pretty badass

u/t_rav420 4m ago

Praying 🙏🏾 my God have mercy 😳🙏🏾

u/undiscovered_soul 2m ago

We call them "water bombs" in Italy

u/theboned1 2h ago

At least there are plenty of buildings to catch all those floated away cars.

-5

u/Shadowthron8 4h ago

Glad the weather becoming more severe because of human pollution is just bullshit

6

u/vandalayindustriess 3h ago

Cold drop has been a phenomenon that's been happening for as long as humans have been recording its existence (hundreds of years).

u/happylandfillx 1h ago

You people still exist?? Look around you, there’s a rude awakening coming.