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Once again, Portugal and Spain find themselves battling the aftermath of widespread flooding after Storm Claudia unleashed torrential downpours and strong winds the previous week.

Claudia's Origin and Path

The storm system developed from a low-pressure zone that had beforehand caused early season chilly and snowy weather through eastern parts of Canada and the north-eastern United States at the start of November.

This storm moved eastward across the Atlantic Ocean in the middle of the second week of November before slowing and stalling to the north-west of the Iberian region, caught in the trough of an progressively more wavy air current.

Consequences for the Iberian Peninsula

Galicia in north-west Spain was hit first, with 80-150mm of rain pouring down along its western coastline in just one full day up to Wednesday evening as a leisurely moving system of rain pushed across the western sectors of the Iberian peninsula.

More downpours and stormy weather on Thursday led to floods to parts of Portugal where an older couple died in the city of Lisbon after rising waters from the bursting Tagus River invaded their residence as they rested.

Unsettled atmospheric states persisted into the weekend, with a violent whirlwind tearing through a camping ground and a nearby hotel in Albufeira in the Algarve region on the weekend's Saturday, claiming the life of an elderly British lady and wounding two dozen and eight persons.

Extended Consequences across the European continent

Claudia had wider effects across western Europe. By drawing warm air from the subtropical zones, the system assisted in raising temperatures in southwestern France to 29.8C (85.6F), the state's maximum ever November temperature.

By Friday, this warm and humid air mass clashed with a chilly atmospheric body across the northern regions of the continent, forming a rainfall belt running from the west of Ireland to the Russian Federation.

In the United Kingdom, this stalling band of rain brought record-breaking rain accumulations, causing severe flooding in Wales.

As the storm continues to weaken early this week, the chilly atmospheric system will advance southward, giving Europe its first taste of colder weather.

Parallel Events in California, USA

California underwent a so-called atmospheric river last week, delivering intense precipitation and powerful winds that resulted in rapid flooding and mudslides in zones scarred by blazes in the recent past.

In excess of 50 millimetres of rain poured down in California's southern part on last Friday, with a another 50 millimetres widely across the state on Saturday last.

More than 100mm of rain accumulated over coastal parts of Southern CA in aggregate, reaching a full 200 millimetres in locations at higher elevations.

This meteorological feature is a concentrated stream of tropical, saturated air coming from the tropical or subtropical regions.

Locations with fire damage including Palisades and Altadena experienced the worst of the rapid inundations and landslides, forcing residents to flee.

In other parts of the state, a man in his seventies passed away after his car was washed off a inundated overpass, and a seven-year-old girl and her dad were pulled into the Pacific by powerful waves on the the state's central shoreline.