That was bad

The gota fria yesterday unloaded an average of 80 litres of water per square metre of land in just six hours. It was the worst that the area has experienced since the 30th September1997 when 270 litres fell in about the same time span. Alicante was worst hit. There the average rose to 113 litres of water per square metre.

Locally, 3 kilometres of the road from Bigastro to Jacarilla (CV 920) was badly flooded as was the road from San Miguel de la Salinas to Los Montesinos (CV 940). The N332 was also flooded around Guardamar and Torrevieja.

Pam and I can confirm this because we set off to Torrevieja to visit the dentist yesterday at about 12am. There were patches of flooding on the CV91 where you had to take care. Water was overflowing the storm drain onto the road but worse than that, water was coming off the campo at the access points with the main road. They were passable with care which in fairness most motorists were demonstrating but then there is always the one.  On more than one occasion, our car was covered by a wave of water created by a motorist passing in the other direction at speed.

We turned towards Los Montesinos on the CV 945 which at first didn’t seem as bad as the road we had left. As we got towards the junction with the AP7 motorway the flooding across the road where paths led from the orange groves to the left was getting worse and worse. You had to pick the place where you thought the water was most shallow and drive with great care. Nobody was speeding through those sections!

Realising that the rain was simply not abating and that the situation on the roads was possibly going to get even worse, we turned back and returned to Bigastro. As it happens, the CV 905 road from Crevillente to Torrevieja experienced severe delays with serious flooding so we would have probably missed the dental appointment anyway.

When we left our house at about 10:30am, the road to the town was clear. By the time we returned, it was awash with yellow water. The torrent of water was running over the water collector at the junction with the road to the dam as if it wasn’t there. Further up, at the point where the storm drain that follows Calle Le Vigan spills out onto the road, it looked impassable. I decided that the force of the water coming out at that point would have made it very difficult to get through so I followed the route around Calle Holanda, up Calle Francia to join Calle Le Vigan from above the junction with our road.  

It is all calm this at the moment but, as you can see on this picture from AEMET, there is a massive cloud mass to the right which is circling around in the anticyclone. That will bring more rain later in the day. From then on though, things should get better and the following days should be drier. I wouldn’t plan on going to the beach anytime this week though.