Flash flooding has affected areas around Barcelona, including El Prat airport and local highways, following a red alert for torrential rain issued by Spain's State Meteorological Agency. This comes shortly after severe floods in Valencia.
Spain is experiencing abnormally high temperatures for the season, leading to a summer-like atmosphere in coastal areas as people flock to the beaches to sunbathe and swim during a winter heat wave. The country's AEMET weather agency attributes the hot spell to an anticyclone carrying a hot air mass from the south, with temperatures averaging 5-10 degrees Celsius above normal. While the agency refrains from directly linking the high temperatures to the climate crisis, experts note a trend of increasingly frequent periods of unusually high temperatures associated with climate change.