Pictures coming in from Valencia show relatively calm conditions as the clean-up and search for survivors continues. But as we touched on in our post at 9.17GMT, a weather warning has been issued for part of the region already devastated by yesterday’s tragedy.

The AEMET state weather agency issued its highest level of alert for the province of Castellon. Further north in the Catalonia region, an amber alert was issued for the city of Tarragona.

Meteorologists said a year’s worth of rain had fallen in eight hours in parts of Valencia on Tuesday. The storm that caused the torrential downpours has since moved in a northeasterly direction.

“There are already very strong storms in the area, especially in the north of Castellon,” AEMET posted on its X account. “The adverse weather continues! Beware!” it added, saying people should not travel to the area.

Local authorities have not disclosed how many people are still unaccounted for after Europe’s deadliest floods in years, but Defence Minister Margarita Robles said late on Wednesday the death toll was likely to rise.

More heavy rain is predicted for the hardest-hit eastern Valencia region and other areas on the north-east coast today.

National weather agency AEMET launched a red alert for Valencia region on Tuesday morning and conditions deteriorated throughout the day.

But it was only in the early evening that the regional body in charge of coordinating the emergency services was set up.

And an alert sent by the civil protection service urging residents in the Mediterranean coastal city of Valencia not to leave home was issued after 8pm.

For many, it was already too late. Motorists began journeys only to find themselves trapped on roads and left at the mercy of raging torrents of water.

“They raised the alarm when the water was already here, there’s no need to tell me the flood is coming,” fumed Julian Ormeno, a 66-year-old pensioner in the Valencia city suburb of Sedavi. “Nobody came to take responsibility,” he told AFP.

With weather forecasters issuing warnings beforehand, such tragedies are “entirely avoidable” if people can be kept away from surging flood water, said Hannah Cloke, hydrology professor at the University of Reading.

The devastating outcome suggests Valencia’s warning system failed, she said. “People just don’t know what to do when faced with a flood, or when they hear warnings.”

“People shouldn’t be dying from these kinds of forecasted weather events in countries where they have the resources to do better,” added Liz Stephens, a professor in climate risks and resilience at the University of Reading.

“We have a long way to go to prepare for this kind of event, and worse, in future.”

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As we’ve been reporting this morning, there are ongoing efforts to find survivors.

However, Emiliano García-Page, the president of the Castilla La-Mancha communitieas, has said part of the hard-hit village of Letur remains inaccessible to crews.

The region said yesterday two people had died. Five residents of Letur remained missing.

“In Letur, specifically, it still hasn’t been possible to access part of the village,” García-Page told reporters.

“The prognosis is pessimistic, but until we find people and confirm things, we will cling to hope.”

Analysis: deadly floods and droughts are two faces of the climate crisis coin

Ajit Niranjan

Residents of Chiva, a small town on the outskirts of Valencia, can expect a grim future of worsening drought as the planet heats up and the country dries out. But on Tuesday, they also witnessed a year’s worth of rainfall in a matter of hours.

The torrential rains that flooded southern and eastern Spain on Tuesday night, ripping away bridges and tearing through towns, have killed scores of people. Fossil fuel pollution plays a role in warping both extremes of the water cycle: heat evaporates water, leaving people and plants parched, but hot air can hold more moisture, increasing the potential for catastrophic downpours.

“Droughts and floods are the two sides of the same climate change coin,” said Stefano Materia, an Italian climate scientist at Barcelona Supercomputing Centre. He said studies had linked droughts in the Mediterranean with the climate emergency through changes in atmospheric circulation at the same time that global temperature rise had severely heated the region.

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The gratitude that greeted Tuesday’s dawn downpours was short-lived in Utiel. When the longed-for rains finally reached the town in the drought-stricken eastern Spanish region of Valencia, they were merciless in their abundance.

“People were very happy at first because they’d been praying for rain as their lands needed water,” said Remedios, who owns a bar in Utiel. “But by 12 o’clock, this storm had really hit and we were all pretty terrified.”

Trapped in the bar, she and a handful of her customers could only sit and watch as Spain’s worst flooding in almost 30 years caused the Magro River to overflow its banks, trapping some residents in their homes and sending cars and rubbish bins surging through the streets on muddy flood waters.

“The rising waters brought mud and stones with them and they were so strong that they broke the surface of the road,” said Remedios, who gave only her first name.

“The tunnel that leads into the town was half-full of mud, trees were down and there were cars and rubbish containers rolling down the streets. My outside terrace has been destroyed – the chairs and shades were all swept away. It’s just a disaster.”

By Wednesday afternoon, the death toll in Valencia and the neighbouring regions of Castilla-La Mancha and Andalucía stood at 95 . Utiel’s mayor, Ricardo Gabaldón, told Las Provincias newspaper that some of the town’s residents had not survived the floods, but was unable to provide an exact number.

Hours earlier, Gabaldón had told Spain’s national broadcaster, RTVE, that Tuesday had been the worst day of his life. “We were trapped like rats,” he said. “Cars and rubbish containers were flowing down the streets. The water was rising to 3 metres.”

Rescue workers in Spain continued to search for more victims after deadly floods, as questions were raised about how one of the world’s most developed nations failed to respond adequately to an extreme storm.

Torrential rains that began at the start of the week sparked flooding that has left at least 95 people dead, the deadliest such disaster in the western European country since 1973.

Defence minister Margarita Robles told Cadena Ser radio station that a military unit specialised in rescue operations would on Thursday start combing through the mud and debris with sniffer dogs in the worst-hit areas.

Asked if the number of victims was likely to increase, she said: “Unfortunately we are not optimistic”.

The teams have brought with them 50 mobile morgues.

More heavy rain was predicted for the hardest-hit eastern Valencia region and other areas on the north-east coast on today.