A shocking timelapse video has revealed the devastating frequency of lightning strikes across Spain’s southern and eastern coasts as the country is battered by floods that have killed more than 200 people in Valencia alone.
The video, shared by weather mapping service WxNB, showed tourist hotspots including Malaga, Marbella and Murcia being deluged by lightning strikes at around 3am on Tuesday night as heavy rain fell.
Lightning was then seen along Spain’s eastern coast, hitting Alicante and Benidorm before making landfall in Valencia, which was devastated by flooding overnight.
Storms also moved further inland from the southern coast, bombarding Seville before eventually passing Madrid and Zaragoza, as another cell briefly hit Barcelona.
Parts of the Valencia region in eastern Spain were inundated with more than a year’s worth of rain in just eight hours on Tuesday, triggering monstrous flash floods.
The floods devastated entire villages and an unknown number of people are still missing, with the death toll expected to rise.
The video, shared by weather mapping service WxNB, showed tourist attractions including Malaga, Marbella and Murcia being hit by lightning strikes.
The lightning was then seen along the east coast of Spain, hitting Alicante and Benidorm before making landfall in Valencia.
Images taken on Thursday show wrecked cars left on motorways, smeared with brown mud and other debris.
“Unfortunately, there are dead people in some vehicles,” Spanish Transport Minister Oscar Puente warned today.
A 71-year-old British man suffering from hypothermia was identified as one of the dead on Wednesday afternoon.
Walls of rushing water turned narrow streets into death traps, sending rivers into the ground floors of homes and sweeping away everything in their path.
The aftermath, with streets full of vehicles and water flowing over normally busy roads, looks eerily similar to the damage caused by a major hurricane or tsunami.
Aerial photographs have revealed the apocalyptic scale of floods in Valencia
Aerial photo shows muddy roads near Valencia covered in wrecked cars and other debris
Broken vehicles, tree branches, downed power lines and household items, all covered in mud, covered the streets of Utiel, just one of dozens of towns in the badly hit region.
Police today revealed that looters have taken advantage of the catastrophic flooding to rob abandoned shops of valuables including computers, mobile phones and perfume.
Thirty-nine suspects have been arrested in the Valencia region as the Guardia Civil continues to crack down on people hoping to profit from the chaos.
Meanwhile, desperate families have resorted to buying food and water from supermarkets, with heartbreaking images of children rummaging through the aisles of devastated food shops.
The army has been called in to lead the search and rescue operation, with 1,000 members of the Spanish Armed Forces mobilised yesterday.
A terrifying clip shows an entire bridge in Valencia being washed away by floodwaters.
A boat runs aground in a field after flash floods in the Valencia region
Aerial photo shows devastated rice fields in Albufera in an area hit by heavy rain
The Paiporta bridge in the town of the same name was completely destroyed when the river below burst its banks and continued to rise.
Shocked onlookers watched in horror as the concrete structure collapsed in the deluge.
The scenes in Paiporta – where at least one baby was counted among the dead – are one of many recorded by locals.
According to the Spanish meteorological agency, rainfall in the town of Chiva in Valencia reached a staggering 491 litres per square metre on Tuesday.
The town, just 30 kilometres west of Valencia, received this amount of rain in just eight hours – the typical amount of rain in an entire year and an “extraordinary accumulation”, the agency added