SPAIN’S wettest town has shattered its all-time rainfall record after Storm Leonardo dropped a deluge of biblical proportions.
Grazalema, the picturesque pueblo blanco in the Cadiz mountains, recorded a staggering 512.5mm of rain in a single 24-hour period ending at 8pm on Wednesday.
The figure is so extreme that it has annihilated the town’s previous daily rainfall record – which had stood for nearly eight decades.
According to data from the local weather station, the previous high was 348.9mm, set way back on January 27, 1948.
Storm Leonardo didn’t just beat this 78-year-old record; it smashed it by nearly 50%, dumping an extra 163mm of water on the village in one day.
To put the scale of the downpour into context, the 512.5mm that fell today is significantly more than the city of Madrid receives in an entire year (approximately 400mm).
The intensity of the storm did not let up once it began late on Tuesday.
Data shows that 314.8mm fell in just a 12-hour window – but even more astonishingly the total rainfall over the last 10 days now sits at nearly 1,300mm.
That 10-day figure alone is higher than the annual rainfall of A Coruña in rainy Galicia, notorious for having an England-like climate.
Meteorologists at AEMET explain that Grazalema’s unique geography is responsible for these eye-watering figures.
The town sits in a natural ‘funnel’ that forces warm, humid winds from the Atlantic rapidly upwards.
As the air rises over the Sierra de Grazalema, it cools and creates turbulence, forcing water droplets to collide and merge in a process known as ‘coalescence’.
This mechanism allows clouds to dump their load with frightening efficiency, creating the ‘rain bomb’ effect seen today.
The unprecedented volume of water has left the ground completely saturated.
Mayor Carlos Garcia reported that the earth is so waterlogged that ‘streams have appeared where none existed before’.
Some residents even filmed water flowing out of electrical sockets inside their homes as the groundwater level rose into the walls.
Other locals have pointed out that historic houses were often built with internal drainage channels to handle such deluges.
Modern builds, however, lack these defences, leaving them helpless as the water rises from beneath.
Yet despite the incredible deluge, Grazalema does not claim Spain’s all-time national record for 24-hour rainfall.
That was recorded in Oliva (Valencia) on November 3, 1987, when 817mm fell in 24 hours. There was also a more recent recording of 771.8mm in Turís (Valencia) in October 2024.
Click here to read more Weather News from The Olive Press.
