More than 200 flights were canceled in Portugal on Wednesday as Storm Charles lashed the country with torrential rain and powerful winds.
Before the storm, Portugal’s government had declared a nationwide state of alert, ordering schools and nonessential public services to close on Wednesday. The authorities also urged people to remain indoors where possible as the storm approached.
Storm Charles was named by Portugal’s weather service, IPMA, which issued its highest level weather warnings for rain and wind across large parts of mainland Portugal and the Madeira archipelago, with wind gusts forecast to reach about 90 miles per hour.
Forecasters had also warned of the possibility of a sting jet, a feature of some powerful storms in which a narrow band of rapidly descending air can produce exceptionally strong winds. Such winds can cause widespread damage, as Storm Kirstin did earlier this year when it hit central Portugal.
On Wednesday, however, Charles appeared to lose strength. As the storm passed north of Madeira, where nearly 12 inches of rainfall was recorded, IPMA reported that the center of the storm had split into two over the Atlantic Ocean, weakening before it reached mainland Portugal.
The change prompted the service to reduce the seriousness of some weather warnings as Charles moved through the southern coastal Algarve region and toward Lisbon, the capital.
Mário Silvestre, the leader of Portugal’s civil protection agency, said on Wednesday that emergency services had responded to more than 500 incidents from early Tuesday morning through noon that day, including fallen trees, landslides, floods and blocked roads.
Some of the strongest wind gusts, of around 70 m.p.h., were recorded in Loulé and Serra do Caldeirão in southern Portugal. Lisbon received the highest rainfall total for the mainland, at about four inches.
Flightradar24, an aviation tracking firm, said that 207 flights had been canceled on Wednesday at the international airport in Lisbon, Portugal’s largest. The disruptions appeared to ease on Thursday, with fewer than 20 flights canceled as of noon.
Spain was also affected by Charles on Wednesday. The country’s weather service, AEMET, issued widespread alerts, including its highest level warning for parts of the provinces of Ávila and Cáceres, where up to six inches of rain was forecast to fall in just 12 hours. The heaviest rain was expected across the southern and western parts of the country.
AEMET also warned of the risk of landslides, especially in areas where summer wildfires had left the ground more vulnerable to heavy rainfall.
More than 160 flights were canceled in Madrid on Wednesday. Schools and businesses also closed in parts of southern Spain.
In central Spain, residents in the town of Piedralaves were ordered to evacuate over concerns that the nearby Horcajo dam could overflow. Authorities warned that rainfall was expected to intensify from midday.
The anticipated severe weather also forced Alfonso Fernández Mañueco, president of the regional government of Castilla y León, to cancel a planned visit to a funeral Mass at Toledo Cathedral for victims of a deadly train crash last month.
Storm Charles developed over the subtropical North Atlantic and was the third named storm of the season in southwestern Europe. It closely followed Storm Bruna, which had brought heavy rain, strong winds and rough seas to the region only a few days earlier, and continued to affect parts of the northern Iberian Peninsula on Wednesday.
Rainfall from both Charles and Bruna was expected to ease on Thursday. But forecasters said that unsettled weather, including more rain and blustery conditions, would persist in parts of the region.
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