Another fatality was recovered from the severe storms in central Greece on Wednesday. In the village of Paltsi in the east of the port city of Volos, the fire brigade recovered the body of a woman, as reported by the broadcaster ERTnews. This increased the death toll in Greece to three.
As of Wednesday, there were seven deaths in Turkey; Another 31 people were injured, it said. At least four people were killed on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast. As of Wednesday evening, the number of storm victims rose to 14 in all three countries.
Warning of further storms
There was initially no end to the heavy rain in sight. The Turkish authorities warned of further storms, which this time should hit the Black Sea region. Heavy thunderstorms and torrential rain were expected there from Wednesday evening. In central Greece, driving bans and warnings not to leave the house were in effect in many places until Thursday. Only in Bulgaria did the situation initially seem to ease; There should be no more rain on the Black Sea coast on Thursday.
There was chaos in central Greece on Wednesday. In many places, power supply, mobile phone networks and the Internet failed. On Wednesday morning, around 400 people waited in the bay in front of the port city of Volos on a ferry that was not allowed to dock because of the storm damage. They were eventually guided to the port of Agios Konstantinos further south. Operations were also temporarily suspended at the airport on the Sporades island of Skiathos.
“We cannot restore the electricity and water supply,” Achilleas Mpeos, mayor of Volos, told Skai broadcaster. “The transformers are under water, it’s dangerous to even try to get there.” Without electricity there is no water, and the sewage treatment plants don’t work, said the mayor.
Again and again rain
The “Superstar” ferry with its 400 passengers has been a few nautical miles from the port of Volos since Tuesday evening. According to media reports, the port police had forbidden the docking because the traffic situation in the city was so difficult. “It’s impossible to clear the streets,” said Mayor Mpeos, “it just stopped raining for a few minutes and we went in with heavy equipment, then it immediately started again.”
The amount of water that has fallen over the Thessaly region so far is the largest that has ever fallen in the country since this data was collected, said the weather agency EMY. The record holder was the town of Zagora, where 754 liters of rain per square meter were measured on Tuesday from midnight to 8:45 p.m.
According to the National Observatory in Athens, the previous record was held by the town of Makrinitsa, which is also in the region. Back in December 2009, however, the amount of rainfall was just over half of the new record, namely 417 liters per square meter. “What is happening in (the region of) Magnisia is an extremely extreme phenomenon, both in terms of the amount and intensity of rainfall and its duration,” chief meteorologist Kostas Lagouvardos told the Kathimerini newspaper.
Lagouvardos suspects that the currently relatively high sea temperatures may have contributed to this. “It’s a static system that’s constantly supplied with humid sea air, so it’s always raining in the same place,” he said.
Remembering the Ahr Valley Flood
It was similar with the Ahr valley flood in Germany in July 2021 – the rainfall there was between 100 and 200 liters per square meter, but at least 134 people died. However, the German Weather Service says that the amount of rain alone cannot be used to determine the severity of the effects.
The topography plays a decisive role – in the Ahr valley, the water flowed into a narrow valley and could not avoid it. In many places in Greece, however, the water eventually flows into the sea.
