VILANOVA DE SAU, Spain (AP) — As Spain choked on stubborn drought last year, a reservoir north of Barcelona emptied, revealing a medieval church.
But in the last few weeks, rising waters have again covered the Sant Roma de Sau church as the country's weather took an abrupt turn.
Drought relief came at a price, as flash floods forced hundreds of people to evacuate their homes, closed schools and highways and swept cars away. While it can be difficult to identify climate change as the cause of a single event, scientists say it is making such swings between dryness and downpour ever more extreme.
The recent floods took place just months after a deadly deluge in Valencia. Here's a look at the volatile weather that led Spain out of a drought.
How unusual were the recent storms?
In the first 18 days of March, Spain received more than double the rainfall it normally gets in the month, according to Spain's national weather agency AEMET. That included in normally arid parts of the country such as the southern Andalusia region where rivers swollen from rainfall prompted authorities to evacuate hundreds of people from their homes.
Madrid got more rain in the first three weeks of March than any month since records began in 1893, said Rubén del Campo, a meteorologist and spokesperson at AEMET.
But weather swings are a fact of life in Spain.
“The blessing and curse of the Spanish climate is exactly that,” said Daniel Argüeso, a climate scientist at Spain's University of the Balearic Islands. "We have these periods of extended drought that usually end with these kinds of situations. Having said that, the rain we had in March has been quite exceptional.”
What does it mean for the drought?
For now, the drought that began in 2023 is over. Reservoirs around the country are around 66% full on average, according to Spain's environment and ecological transition ministry. That’s better than they have been in a decade, del Campo said.
In Catalonia, the Sau reservoir that supplies water to Barcelona is now about 48% full, compared to less than 5% at the same time last year.
That's good news for Jordi Galabardes and his wife Montse Bufils, who live in the nearby village of San Martin Sescorts, in Catalonia. Last year, they couldn't water their garden due to water restrictions.
“In just three weeks, it's filled up a lot, which gives hope that we can recover all this," Galabardes said on Monday near the reservoir's edge.
How long the country's water reserves remain at healthy levels depends on factors like how much more springtime rain the country gets and just how hot and dry the summer is. But climate scientists predict that Spain will likely stay free of water restrictions at least through the summer.
“We’ve come out of drought, but it’s not that there is a huge excess of water,” del Campo said. “Spain is a country where water resources are never abundant.”
Is climate change causing Spain's volatile weather?
Climate change is likely making Spain's fluctuations more intense, climate scientists say. Around the world, rising temperatures stoked by climate change are speeding up the hydrological cycle in which water moves between Earth and the atmosphere. That is triggering more extreme weather, such as prolonged droughts and intense rainfall, climate scientists say.
A warmer atmosphere can also hold more water, about 7% more for every degree Celsius, scientists say. That means when it does rain, it's more likely to be heavy.
“We can now go several months without a drop of rain, and then have a major storm again in the summer," said Jorge Olcina, a geography professor at the University of Alicante in Spain. "In other words, we're losing the regularity of the rains.”
But attributing a single event like the rainfall this month to climate change remains difficult, in part due to Spain's natural weather extremes, Argüeso said.
“The fact that the variability is so large is an obstacle in measuring climate change,” he said.
___ Naishadham reported from Madrid.
Suman Naishadham And Emilio Morenatti, The Associated Press
