Farmers in Spain warned yesterday that torrential rains and high winds had left fields submerged and caused millions of euros worth of damage to crops, as Spain and Portugal braced for more extreme weather.
The Iberian Peninsula has already experienced a succession of storms in recent weeks, bringing heavy rain, thunder, snow and strong gales ahead of the arrival of Storm Marta yesterday.
More than 11,000 people have been forced to leave their homes in Spain’s southern Andalusia region, while nearly 170 roads have been closed across Spain and rail services have been disrupted in Portugal.
Portugal’s agriculture ministry said that preliminary estimates put losses in the agricultural and forestry sectors at around 750 million euros ($890m) due to the storms, which are expected to intensify in the coming days.
Spanish state weather agency AEMET warned yesterday that Storm Marta would bring snow and hazardous coastal conditions, as well as more rain. Authorities issued an orange weather warning, the second highest after red.
The top-flight soccer match between Sevilla and Girona was postponed because of the bad weather, La Liga said, after a request by the Andalusian club.
Miguel Angel Perez, of the farmers organisation COAG in Andalusia’s Cadiz province, told Spanish television TVE yesterday: “It is raining without stopping. Crops like broccoli, carrots and cauliflowers are under water. Thousands of hectares inundated. We have a real natural catastrophe.”
Perez said the storm had caused millions of euros of damage to this year’s crop and farmers would seek government help to recover.
Waterlogging has also raised fears of structural shifts including landslides.
Residents of several towns in the Serranía de Ronda mountain range in Málaga, which had been battered by Storm Leonardo this week, said yesterday the ground had trembled for days.
The council of one town in the area, Cortes de la Frontera, said in a post on social media yesterday that there was ‘no danger’ from the tremors which have also been felt in nearby towns of Benaoján, Gaucín, and Jimera de Líbar.
Specialists from the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) were deployed in the area to monitor the situation.
Several residential areas near the Guadalquivir River in Andalusia’s Cordoba province were evacuated due to the dramatic rise in water levels.
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