Terrifying second vacation island Majorca is hit by floods as hotspot Palma locks down and locals are instructed to not depart house – with 2,000 nonetheless lacking after monster Spanish storm smashed Valencia

Holidaymakers and locals have been told to stay inside as parts of Majorca have been placed under storm lockdown this weekend amid torrential rains and devastating floods.

The storm has battered coastal areas and submerged roads, with dramatic footage showing motorists driving through high floodwaters and huge torrents of water hurtling through towns.

One tourist shared a video of terrifying lightning above her villa, writing on Friday night that the storm has ‘brought heavy rainfall and violent thunderstorms’.

She said the weather system had left some roads impassable and ‘parts of the island no longer accessible’ with reports of drivers being rescued from their cars in the popular coastal resort of Santa Ponca.

Meanwhile a Brit who lives part-time in Majorca told MailOnline he did not leave his apartment on Friday due to ‘heavy rain and thunder all day’, adding that he could see a ‘continuous water spout’ from his patio.

The extreme conditions are expected to ease today, with emergency services saying that the worst of the storm seems to have passed, but the public warned to stay alert as heavy rains continue in many areas.

‘The great luck is that people stayed at home, otherwise we could be facing another scenario,’ one emergency services chief told local media.

Tragically, it was a very different situation in Valencia this week, where warnings came too late and many people were caught out by flash flooding.

More than 200 people have been confirmed dead, a figure which authorities fear could sharply rise in the coming hours and days, with more than 2,000 people still unaccounted for after floods tore through their towns.

As the shock dissipates, anger has grown over the authorities’ handling of the crisis, both for their late warnings of the looming floods and the chaotic relief response. 

Meanwhile local authorities in Majorca have said warnings telling people to stay at home minimised the impact of the disaster, with no fatalities reported so far.

A severe weather front moved across the Balearics Friday night, with the storm dumping more than 100 litres of water per square metre, according to the State Meteorological Agency.

A total of 87 incidents were responded to by emergency services – most of them due to on public roads and in basements. 

Areas of the main promenade in Palma were cordoned off with red tape, and the city’s streets appear nearly deserted. 

Public parks, gardens and cemeteries have all been closed until Monday and homeless people evacuated from flood zones. 

Palma’s first deputy mayor, Javier Bonet told people to only leave their homes if it is ‘absolutely necessary’. 

He said: ‘We are not on red alert, but it is essential to warn the population to avoid greater risks.’ 

The national weather service Aemet declared yesterday that parts of Majorca could be battered with up to 120mm of water in just three to four hours. 

To put that figure into context, the UK recorded an average rainfall of 1,290mm in the entire year of 2023 – a tenth of that annual amount could now hit parts of Majorca in a matter of hours. 

Officials in Palma have instituted serious weather warnings that came into force at 10am local time on Friday. 

Many have been lifted today as the storm is believed to have ‘stabilised’, with emergency services continuing to urge people to exercise caution as some areas remain flooded.

It comes as rescue crews in Valencia continue their searches for bodies in stranded cars and sodden buildings as bewildered residents salvage what they can from their ruined homes.

The monstrous flash floods on Tuesday have claimed at least 205 lives, with 155 deaths confirmed in the eastern Valencia region alone.

And in the Costa de la Luz resort of Isla Cristina yesterday a terrifying waterspout made landfall. 

The weather phenomenon flung small boats into the air and ripped up trees in the town near Spain’s southern border with Portugal. 

Sir Keir Starmer said this week the UK ‘stands with Spain’ as an unknown number of people remain missing in the disaster. 

The Prime Minister contacted his Spanish counterpart Pedro Sanchez to offer his condolences.

Sir Keir said: ‘My thoughts are with those who have lost their lives, their families and all those affected by the devastation caused by the extreme flooding in Spain. The UK stands with Spain during this difficult time.’

More horrors emerged on Thursday from the debris and ubiquitous layers of mud left by the walls of water that produced Spain’s deadliest natural disaster in living memory.

The damage from the storm late Tuesday and early Wednesday recalled the aftermath of a tsunami, with survivors left to pick up the pieces as they mourn their loved ones.

Cars were piled on one another like fallen dominoes, uprooted trees, downed power lines and household items all mired in mud that covered streets in dozens of communities in Valencia, a region south of Barcelona on the Mediterranean coast.

‘Unfortunately, there are dead people inside some vehicles,’ Spain’s Transport Minister Oscar Puente said early on Thursday before the death toll spiked from 95 on Wednesday night.

Rushing water turned narrow streets into death traps and spawned rivers that tore through homes and businesses, sweeping away cars, people and everything else in its path.

The floods demolished bridges and left roads unrecognisable.

Luis Sanchez, a welder, said he saved several people who were trapped in their cars on the flooded V-31 highway south of Valencia city.

The road rapidly became a floating graveyard strewn with hundreds of vehicles.

‘I saw bodies floating past. I called out, but nothing,’ Mr Sanchez said.

‘The firefighters took the elderly first, when they could get in. I am from nearby so I tried to help and rescue people.

‘People were crying all over, they were trapped.’

Regional authorities said late Wednesday that rescuers in helicopters saved some 70 people stranded on rooftops and in cars, but ground crews were far from done.

‘We are searching house by house,’ Angel Martinez, one of 1,000 soldiers helping with rescue efforts told Spain’s national radio RNE from the town of Utiel, where at least six people died.

 A journalist saw rescuers remove seven body bags from an underground garage in Barrio de la Torre.

‘Our priority is to find the victims and the missing so we can help end the suffering of their families,’ Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez said after meeting with officials and emergency services in Valencia on Thursday, the first of three official days of mourning.

Scientists explained how deluge began after cold and warm air clashed to produce powerful rain clouds.

The phenomenon is known locally as DANA, a Spanish acronym for high-altitude isolated depression, and unlike common storms or squalls it can form independently of polar or subtropical jet streams.

When cold air blows over warm Mediterranean waters it causes hotter air to rise quickly and form towering, dense, water-laden clouds that can remain over the same area for many hours, raising their destructive potential. 

The event sometimes provokes large hail storms and tornadoes, as seen this week, meteorologists say.

Eastern and Southern Spain are particularly susceptible to the phenomenon due to its position between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. 

Warm, humid air masses and cold fronts meet in a region where mountains favour the formation of storm clouds and rainfall.

The country has also suffered through an almost two-year drought, meaning that when the deluge happened, the ground was so hard that it could not absorb the rain, worsening the effect of the flash floods. 

The violent weather event surprised regional government officials.

Spain’s national weather service said it rained more in eight hours in the Valencian town of Chiva than it had in the preceding 20 months.

A man wept as he showed a reporter from national broadcaster RTVE the shell of what was once the ground floor of his home in Catarroja, south of Valencia.

It looked as though a bomb had detonated inside, obliterating furniture and belongings, and stripping the paint off some walls.

In Paiporta, mayor Maribel Albalat said Thursday that at least 62 people had perished in the community of 25,000 next to Valencia city.

‘(Paiporta) never has floods, we never have this kind of problem.

‘And we found a lot of elderly people in the town centre,’ Ms Albalat told RTVE.

‘There were also a lot of people who came to get their cars out of their garages … it was a real trap.’

While the most suffering was inflicted on municipalities near the city of Valencia, the storms unleashed their fury over huge swathes of the south and eastern coast of the Iberian peninsula.

Two fatalities were confirmed in the neighbouring Castilla La Mancha region and one in southern Andalusia.

Greenhouses and farms across southern Spain, known as Europe’s garden for its exported produce, were also ruined by heavy rains and flooding.

The storms spawned a freak tornado in Valencia and a hail storm that punched holes in cars in Andalusia.

Homes were left without water as far southwest as Malaga in Andalusia.

Heavy rains continued Thursday further north as the Spanish weather agency issued alerts for several counties in Castellon, in the eastern Valencia region, and for Tarragona in Catalonia, as well as southwest Cadiz.

‘This storm front is still with us,’ the prime minister said.

‘Stay home and heed the official recommendation and you will help save lives.’

Many survivors had to walk long distances caked in mud to find food and water.

Most of their cars had been destroyed and the mud, destruction and debris left by the storm made some roads unpassable.

Some pushed shopping carts along sodden streets while others carried their children to keep them out of the muck.

Some 150,000 people in Valencia were without electricity on Wednesday, but roughly half had power by Thursday.

An unknown number did not have running water and were relying on whatever bottled water they could find.