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WEATHER

WATCH: Madrid Metro flooded as heavy rain in Spain lingers

Heavy rain and flooding caused by Storm Efraín have affected different parts of Spain in recent days. The downpours have also swept through Spain's capital, flooding streets and numerous Madrid Metro stations.

Published: 15 December 2022 13:14 CET
madrid metro flood rain 2022
Madrid residents have filmed hundreds of videos showing how heavy rain has flooded numerous metro stations across the city: Screenshots: Twitter

The torrential rains affecting large parts of Spain this week have reached Madrid and flooded its metro system, causing the closure of several lines.

Though Spain may not have had the snowfall that much of northern Europe currently has, central and southern areas of the country have experienced heavy rains, very strong winds and flooding.

The arrival of Storm Efraín has brought adverse weather to 35 provinces that have been on alert. In some parts of the country, it hasn’t stopped raining for over a week.

That’s been the case in Madrid, where heavy rain on Tuesday and Wednesday has seen Spanish social media fill up with images and videos of the capital’s metro system completely flooded by the heavy rainfall.

The steps of Quevedo station, in Madrid’s Trafalgar neighbourhood, were like a river on Wednesday night with a constant stream of rainwater rushing into the station.

The Banco de España station, close to the famous Paseo del Prado in central Madrid, has been completely flooded and is closed.

Emergency services across the Madrid region responded to 323 incidents related to flooding including the metro stations, disrupted traffic, fallen trees and damage to homes and buildings. 

One Madrileño saw the funny side of things however, joking that ‘they say Madrid doesn’t have a beach’, and adding ‘Point of View: You forgot your bikini’.

Footage shared on Twitter also shows the Puerta del Sol station inundated with rainwater, described as a ‘wasteland’.

The flooding has caused partial or full closures on Madrid Metro lines 2, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 11.

Commuters who still tried to use the metro have been faced with rainwater working its way all the way down to the platform, and even leaking into the train carriages, as seen here.

More footage shared online shows that many Madrid streets have also been flooded, with some tunnels and roads being completely blocked off for cars, causing traffic jams in the process.

Opposition party Más Madrid has compiled a video with all the most eye-catching footage of the floods in order to criticise right-wing city officials for not having the right drainage installed across the city to avoid Madrid grinding to a halt whenever there is heavy rain or snow.

But even in rural areas of the Madrid region where tarmac and drainage can’t be blamed for the flooding, stair rods of rain came down on Wednesday, as in La Pedriza area of the Guadarrama mountain range where Madrid’s Manzanares river runs through.

According to Spain’s Aemet weather agency, it will continue raining on Thursday and Friday in Madrid, with some respite over the weekend but more rain forecast for next week.

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WEATHER

Does Spain use cloud seeding?

Some voices online blamed cloud seeding for flash flooding in Dubai recently. Does Spain use this weather modification technique and is it being harnessed as a means of combatting severe drought in the country?

Published: 30 April 2024 11:06 CEST
Does Spain use cloud seeding?

The internet was awash with images of dramatic flooding in the UAE two weeks ago, in which parts of the country saw more rainfall in a single day than it usually does in an entire year on average.

The UEA government stated that it was the most rainfall the country had seen in 75 years and an incredible 10 inches of rain fell in the city of Al Ain.

Predictably, the freak weather event sparked fierce internet debate about the causes and consequences among climate change activists and climate change sceptics. The cause, in particular, struck a chord with certain subsections of the internet and many were asking the same question: did ‘cloud seeding’ cause this biblical downpour?

But what exactly is cloud seeding? Does Spain use it? And with the country’s ongoing drought conditions, should it be using it?

What is cloud seeding?

According to the Desert Research Institute: “Cloud seeding is a weather modification technique that improves a cloud’s ability to produce rain or snow by introducing tiny ice nuclei into certain types of subfreezing clouds. These nuclei provide a base for snowflakes to form. After cloud seeding takes place, the newly formed snowflakes quickly grow and fall from the clouds back to the surface of the Earth, increasing snowpack and streamflow.”

Cloud seeing is used by countries around the world, not only in the Middle East but in China and the U.S, usually in areas suffering drought concerns. The process can be done from the ground, with generators, or from above with planes.

Does Spain use cloud seeding?

Sort of, but on a far smaller scale and not in the same way other countries do. In places like China and the U.S, where large swathes of the country are at risk of drought, cloud seeding is used to help replenish rivers and reservoirs and implemented on an industrial scale.

In Spain, however, the technique has been for a much more specific (and small scale) reason: to avoid hailstorms that can destroy crops.

This has mostly been used in the regions of Madrid and Aragón historically.

But cloud seeding isn’t something new and innovative, despite how futuristic it might seem. In fact, Spain has a pretty long history when it comes to weather manipulation techniques. Between 1979 and 1981, the first attempts to stimulate rainfall took place in Spain, coordinated by the World Meteorological Organisation.

“In 1979, in Valladolid, different techniques were developed to observe the local clouds but they did not meet any possible conditions for cloud seeding experiments. The project came to a standstill,” José Luis Sánchez, professor of Applied Physics at the University of León, told La Vanguardia.

This sort of cloud seeding, as used abroad, doesn’t really happen in Spain anymore. Rather, when it’s used it’s done to protect crops on a local level. Spain’s Ministry for Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge are responsible for authorising cloud seeding, but there are only a handful of current authorisations to combat hail, such as the one granted to the Madrid’s Agricultural Chamber combat hail in the south-east of the region.

As of 2024, it is believed that no regions have requested cloud seeding (whether by generator or plane) to ‘produce’ more rain.

So, cloud seeding isn’t currently used like it is in countries such as the U.S., China, and the UAE. But should it, and could it solve the drought issue in Spain?

An aircraft technician inspects a plane’s wing mounted with burn-in silver iodide (dry ice) flare racks. (Photo by Indranil MUKHERJEE / AFP)

Spain’s drought conditions

Spain has been suffering drought conditions for several years now. Last year the government announced a multi-billion dollar package to combat the drought conditions, and several regions of Spain have brought in water restrictions to try and maintain dwindling reservoir reserves. 

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At times in Spain in recent years it has felt as though another temperature or minimum rainfall record is broken every other day. The drought conditions are particularly bad in the southern region of Andalusia and Catalonia, where, despite heavy rain over Easter, reservoirs in the region are at just 18 percent capacity, the lowest level in the country.

So, could cloud seeding be used in Spain to help alleviate some of the drought conditions? Yes and no. Seeding is not the only answer to drought, but could theoretically be used as one option among many.

“It’s just another tool in the box,” Mikel Eytel, a water resources specialist with the Colorado River District, told Yale Environment 360 magazine: “It’s not the panacea that some people think it is.”

This is essentially because cloud seeding does not actually produce more rain, rather it stimulates water vapour already present in clouds to condense and fall faster. For there to be a significant amount of rainfall, the air needs significant levels of moisture.

That is to say, using cloud seeing to try and stimulate more rain may help Spain’s drought conditions in a small way, but the difference would be marginal.

“It’s not as simple and may not be as promising as people would like,” respected cloud physicist Professor William R. Cotton, wrote in The Conversation. 

“Experiments that produce snow or rain require the right type of clouds with sufficient moisture and the right temperature and wind conditions. The percentage increases are small and it is difficult to know when the snow or rain fell naturally and when it was triggered by seeding.”

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