Madeira Flash-Floods

[GreyCrag]

Not much about the Floods in Madeira on the news, however the footage that is being shown is quite spectacular (although probobally not so for the victims or residents living there.)

The Flash-Floods are on-par with the Italian floods a few years ago, where vast torrents of water literally poured down Gulleys in one sweep from the onset of heavy rains and storms, a similar scenario seen yesterday at Madeira where de-forestation along the mountainous central region has been a cause of concern for some time.

Sadly its resulted in the scenes now seen today.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8526679.stm

[iand61]

Spent a day in Funchal on Madeira during a cruise over Christmas and was amazed how beautiful as place it was.

Houses seem to literally hang on to the mountain sides and some of the roads are as steep as anything i've ever seen.

We went on the cablecar up from the sea front to the top of the mountain and crossed a few of the canalised mountain streams.

It did occur to me then that, given severe enough conditions, these rivers could easily overflow with the size of some of the boulders on the beds obvious evidence of past floods.

Obviously thoughts must go out to those who died and those with property damage and i do hope that Madeira can recover quickly enough so the tourists, for which the local economy relises so much will return.

Even in my very limited time, there i realised how special a place it is.

Ian

[Joneseye]

I was interested to see what kind of intensity of rainfall fell on Madeira to cause such devastation... and came across this:

http://english.pravda.ru/hotspots/disasters/21-02-2010/112311-madeira_calamity-0

111mm in 6 hours is pretty intense and has all the hallmarks of Boscastle and the floods of July 2007. Throw the mountainous geography into the equation and it is easy to see why such devastation was caused.

[mesocyclone]

Some really extreme rainfall. Some of the video footage is shocking. My heart goes out to all those affected.