SPAIN’s national weather agency AEMET has defended itself after issuing a red alert for Huelva only once torrential rain was already battering the province — prompting anger from residents who said the warning came too late.
The alert arrived on phones around 9.35am on Wednesday, when Civil Protection sent an emergency message to thousands of people across western Andalucía warning of “extreme risk from rain” and urging them to stay indoors.
By then, many were already on their way to work or had dropped children at school.
“Why send the red alert when we’re already out?” one frustrated resident wrote on X.
AEMET said it had already issued orange warnings the day before, which signal a serious risk of flooding.
But its forecast models showed the heaviest rain would fall further west, in southern Portugal, not directly over Huelva.
In the early hours of Wednesday, however, the storm changed direction and grew much more powerful than expected.
What had looked like a standard autumn squall turned into a massive, fast-moving storm cell that dumped record rainfall over Huelva in just a few hours.
“Continuous monitoring showed the situation was far more intense than forecast,” AEMET explained.
The agency then upgraded the alert to red, meaning extreme danger to life and property.
Meteorologists said that while their computer models are highly advanced, weather systems that form suddenly and shift quickly are still difficult to predict.
Asked why neighbouring Sevilla stayed at orange alert despite being hit hard, AEMET said the city’s rainfall stayed just below red-level thresholds — though some areas may briefly have exceeded them.
Officials stressed that an orange warning already means serious risk, and people should take it just as seriously as a red one.
Many residents drew comparisons with the Valencia DANA one year ago, when more than 220 people were killed after authorities were accused of failing to issue timely warnings as rivers burst their banks across the region.
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