TORRENTIAL rain hit the south of the Alicante province and the Murcia Region yesterday (Monday) whilst much of the rest of the east coast were still basking in sunshine after the weekend's heatwave.
And further storms are forecast for today (Tuesday) across the country, with a general drop in temperatures after Sunday saw the mercury rocket to 48ºC in Sevilla and well into the high 30s elsewhere in the country.
In Villena (Alicante province), 80 litres of rain per square metre was recorded in just 20 minutes yesterday.
Rainfall of 40 litres per square metre in an hour is considered by home insurance companies to be sufficient to cause damage to a well-maintained and properly-constructed building, and storms of this magnitude in the Comunidad Valenciana are normally only seen in October and occasionally April.
In fact, in the last 12 months, practically no rainfall has been recorded in the region aside from a freak flash flood late in August in the north of the Alicante province, which has led to fears of drought and a water supply shortage by as early as next year.
Further south, in the Region of Murcia, garages and ground-floor properties were flooded and streets were several inches deep in water - up to a foot in some cases.
The roof of a house in Caravaca de la Cruz caved in, according to local emergency services, in the Plaza Abul Khatar.
And a wall collapsed inside a house on the C/ Rosales.
In both cases, nobody was hurt, but in the first house the occupants are now without a kitchen as the part of the roof that came down was just above it.
The north-west part of Murcia remains on storm alert today, as does the Comunidad Valenciana as a whole.
