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Once again, Portugal and Spain find themselves recovering from extensive inundation in the wake of Tempest Claudia brought heavy rain and powerful gusts the previous week.

Claudia's Formation and Trajectory

This meteorological event originated from a low-pressure zone that had beforehand caused early season freezing temperatures and snowfall through eastern parts of the Canadian territory and the American north-east in early November.

The system journeyed east across the Atlantic Ocean during the second weekend of November before losing momentum and stopping to the northwestern area of the Iberian region, caught in the trough of an increasingly amplified air current.

Effects in Iberia

The northwestern Spanish region of Galicia was hit first, with a substantial 80 to 150 millimetres of rain pouring down along its Atlantic coast in just one full day up to Wednesday night as a slow-moving band of rain pushed across western parts of the Iberian peninsula.

Additional rainfall and electrical storms on the following Thursday led to floods to parts of Portugal where a senior pair perished in Lisbon after rising waters from the bursting Tagus River entered their home as they rested.

Stormy conditions continued into the weekend, with a twister ripping through a camping ground and a nearby hotel in Albufeira in Portugal's south on the weekend's Saturday, killing an elderly British lady and harming 28 individuals.

Wider Effects across the European continent

The storm produced wider effects across Europe's western part. By siphoning heated air from the subtropical zones, the system assisted in raising temperatures in southwestern France to nearly 30 degrees Celsius, the nation's all-time high November temperature.

By Friday, this tropical air mass collided with a cold air mass across the northern areas of Europe, forming a band of rain running from the west of Ireland to the Russian Federation.

In the UK, this stalling band of rain brought exceptionally large precipitation amounts, leading to severe flooding in Wales.

As Claudia progressively weakens at the start of the week, the chilly atmospheric system will push south, providing the continent its first taste of colder weather.

Simultaneous Occurrences in California

California experienced an "atmospheric river" recently, causing heavy rain and high-velocity gusts that led to sudden inundations and mudslides in areas impacted by wildfires in the recent past.

More than 50mm of rain poured down in the southern region of the state on the week's end, with a further 50mm widely across the state on Saturday last.

More than 100mm of rain was deposited on shoreline regions of Southern CA in all, attaining 200mm overall in areas of elevated terrain.

Such a weather system is a concentrated stream of warm, moist air coming from the equatorial or near-equatorial zones.

Locations with fire damage including Palisades and Altadena experienced the most intense the rapid inundations and earth movements, leading to evacuations.

In other parts of the state, a elderly male died after his automobile was carried away from a flooded bridge, and a young girl aged seven and her father were pulled into the Pacific by big swells on the the state's central shoreline.