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Portugal and Spain are once more recovering from significant flooding in the wake of Tempest Claudia brought torrential downpours and powerful gusts the previous week.

The Storm's Formation and Trajectory

The storm system formed from a region of depressed atmospheric pressure that had beforehand driven early season freezing temperatures and snowfall through the eastern sectors of Canada and the north-eastern United States at the start of November.

The system journeyed east across the Atlantic Ocean in the middle of the second week of November before slowing and stalling to the northwestern area of the Iberian peninsula, caught in the trough of an increasingly amplified atmospheric river.

Consequences for Iberia

Spain's Galicia area in the northwest was hit first, with a substantial 80 to 150 millimetres of rain falling along its Atlantic coast in just 24 hours up to the evening of Wednesday as a leisurely moving system of rain crawled across the western areas of the peninsula.

Additional rainfall and electrical storms on Thursday led to floods to parts of Portugal where an elderly couple lost their lives in the city of Lisbon after rising waters from the bursting Tagus River entered their home as they rested.

Stormy conditions persisted into the weekend, with a twister devastating a camping ground and a nearby hotel in Albufeira in the south in Portugal's south on the weekend's Saturday, killing an 85-year-old British woman and harming 28 people.

Extended Consequences across the European continent

This system triggered wider effects across the western European nations. By siphoning heated air from the warmer regions, the system assisted in raising temperatures in south-west France to 85.6 degrees Fahrenheit, the state's maximum ever November temperature.

By the following Friday, this hot and moist atmospheric body collided with a cold air mass across the northern regions of Europe, generating a rainfall belt running from western Ireland to the Russian Federation.

In the Britain, this halting system of rain brought record-breaking rain accumulations, causing major inundations in the Welsh region.

As the storm progressively weakens early this week, the frigid air will move towards the south, delivering to Europe its initial glimpse of the winter season.

Simultaneous Occurrences in the state of California

The US state of California underwent a so-called atmospheric river last week, delivering intense precipitation and high-velocity gusts that led to flash flooding and mudslides in areas scarred by forest fires in the recent past.

In excess of 50 millimetres of rain fell in the southern region of the state on last Friday, with a another 50 millimetres across extensive areas of California on Saturday last.

More than 100mm of rain accumulated over coastal areas of Southern CA in all, attaining a full 200 millimetres in areas of elevated terrain.

Such a weather system is a narrow band of tropical, saturated air stemming from the tropics or subtropics.

Regions previously burned including the Pacific Palisades area and the town of Altadena experienced the most severe the flash flooding and earth movements, leading to evacuations.

Elsewhere in California, a man in his seventies passed away after his automobile was washed off a submerged bridge, and a child of seven years and her dad were dragged into the ocean by large waves on the California's Central Coast.