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Once again, Portugal and Spain find themselves battling the aftermath of significant inundation in the wake of Storm Claudia brought heavy rain and strong winds last week.

The Storm's Origin and Path

This weather system originated from a low-pressure zone that had earlier driven early season chilly and snowy weather through the eastern sectors of the Canadian territory and the north-eastern United States in early November.

Claudia moved eastward across the Atlantic Ocean in the middle of the second week of November before decelerating and halting to the north-west of the Spanish and Portuguese landmass, caught in the trough of an increasingly amplified jet stream.

Effects in the Iberian Peninsula

The northwestern Spanish region of Galicia was initially impacted, with three to six inches of rain coming down along its west coast in just a single day up to the evening of Wednesday as a sluggish front of rain crawled across western parts of the peninsula.

Further showers and thunderstorms on the following Thursday led to floods to parts of Portugal where an elderly couple perished in Lisbon after water from the overflowing Tagus River flooded their dwelling as they slept.

Stormy conditions persisted into the weekend, with a twister ripping through a campsite and a adjacent hotel in the town of Albufeira in Portugal's south on Saturday, fatally injuring an British woman aged 85 and harming 28 people.

Wider Effects across the European continent

Claudia had broader repercussions across western Europe. By drawing warm air from the subtropics, the system assisted in raising temperatures in France's south-west to 29.8C (85.6F), the state's maximum ever autumn temperature.

By the following Friday, this warm and humid air mass collided with a chilly atmospheric body across the northern areas of Europe, forming a rainfall belt extending from western Ireland to the Russian Federation.

In the UK, this stationary front of rain brought exceptionally large precipitation amounts, leading to significant waterlogging in Wales.

As this weather phenomenon progressively weakens in the coming days, the chilly atmospheric system will move towards the south, giving Europe its first taste of colder weather.

Parallel Events in California

The Golden State encountered a so-called atmospheric river last week, causing torrential rain and high-velocity gusts that led to flash flooding and landslides in zones affected by wildfires previously in the year.

In excess of 50 millimetres of rain was recorded in California's southern part on last Friday, with a additional two inches broadly over the state on the subsequent Saturday.

Over four inches of rain fell over coastal areas of southern California in total, attaining a full 200 millimetres in spots on high ground.

An atmospheric river is a plume of warm, moist air stemming from the tropics or subtropics.

Regions previously burned including the Pacific Palisades area and Altadena region suffered the most intense the flash flooding and mudslides, leading to evacuations.

Elsewhere in California, a elderly male passed away after his automobile was carried away from a inundated overpass, and a child of seven years and her dad were dragged into the ocean by big swells on the California's Central Coast.