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Portugal and Spain are once more dealing with the consequences of widespread flooding following Storm Claudia brought heavy rain and powerful gusts over the past seven days.

Claudia's Origin and Path

This weather system originated from a region of depressed atmospheric pressure that had earlier driven early season chilly and snowy weather through eastern parts of Canada and the north-eastern US in early November.

Claudia journeyed east across the Atlantic Ocean during the second weekend of November before slowing and stalling to the northwestern area of the Spanish and Portuguese landmass, caught in the trough of an progressively more wavy atmospheric river.

Effects in Spain and Portugal

The northwestern Spanish region of Galicia was initially impacted, with 80-150mm of rain pouring down along its western coastline in just one full day up to the evening of Wednesday as a slow-moving band of rain pushed across the western areas of the region.

Additional rainfall and electrical storms on Thursday last week led to floods to Portuguese localities where an elderly couple died in the capital Lisbon after water from the overflowing Tagus River flooded their dwelling as they slept.

Unsettled atmospheric states continued into the weekend, with a tornado tearing through a campsite and a adjacent hotel in the town of Albufeira in southern Portugal on the weekend's Saturday, claiming the life of an elderly British lady and wounding 28 people.

Extended Consequences across the European continent

Claudia had more extensive impacts across the western European nations. By siphoning heated air from the subtropical zones, the system helped temperatures in southwestern France to nearly 30 degrees Celsius, the state's maximum ever November temperature.

By the following Friday, this warm and humid air mass met a chilly atmospheric body across the northern regions of the continent, generating a precipitation zone stretching from western Ireland to the Russian Federation.

In the United Kingdom, this stationary front of rain produced exceptionally large precipitation amounts, leading to significant waterlogging in the Welsh region.

As the storm loses strength at the start of the week, the chilly atmospheric system will advance southward, providing the continent its initial glimpse of winter.

Simultaneous Occurrences in California

The US state of California experienced an "atmospheric river" recently, delivering torrential rain and strong winds that provoked rapid flooding and landslides in areas affected by forest fires in the recent past.

Over two inches of rain fell in southern California on last Friday, with a additional two inches broadly over the state on Saturday.

Over four inches of rain was deposited on shoreline regions of the state's south in aggregate, reaching eight inches in total in areas of elevated terrain.

Such a weather system is a plume of hot, humid air stemming from the equatorial or near-equatorial zones.

Locations with fire damage including Palisades and the town of Altadena endured the most intense the sudden floods and mudslides, leading to evacuations.

Elsewhere in California, a man in his seventies died after his vehicle was swept off a flooded bridge, and a seven-year-old girl and her father were pulled into the sea by powerful waves on the California's Central Coast.