“Yesterday was the worst day of my life,” Ricardo Gabaldón, the mayor of Utiel, a town in Valencia, told the Spanish national broadcaster RTVE.
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He said several people were still missing in his town. “We were trapped like rats. Cars and rubbish containers were flowing down the streets. The water was rising to 3 metres.”

At least 72 people are feared to have died after torrential rains hit southern and eastern Spain on Tuesday, bringing flash floods that raged through towns and cut off roads and railway lines.

As the search continued for the missing, people were urged to stay off the roads and away from swollen rivers amid warnings that the severe weather was not over and that the number of fatalities could still rise.

By 10am on Wednesday, the rains in Valencia had subsided. But Spain’s national weather service forecast more storms through Thursday, with the rains moving to the north-east of the Iberian peninsula.

The intense rain has been attributed to a phenomenon known as the gota fría, or “cold drop”, which occurs when cold air moves over the warm waters of the Mediterranean. This creates atmospheric instability, causing warm, saturated air to rise rapidly, leading to the formation of towering cumulonimbus clouds in a matter of hours and dumping heavy rain across eastern parts of Spain.

Scientists say extreme weather events such as heatwaves and storms are becoming more intense because of the climate crisis.

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