Deadly storm in Athens dumps six months of rain in a single day
Top expert confirms the Greek capital received 40 per cent of its annual rainfall in under 24 hours, leaving two dead and hundreds of homes flooded
A deadly storm this week dumped nearly six months of rain on the Greek capital, Athens, in less than a day, one of the country’s top weather experts said on Thursday.
Wednesday’s storm lashed the country and left two dead, with disaster crews spending Thursday cleaning up debris.
Kostas Lagouvardos, research director at the National Observatory in Athens, said the “extreme” weather phenomenon had dumped up to 170 mm (6.7 inches) of rain on the capital.
That amounted to “about 40 per cent of the rain that falls annually in Athens”, he said on the sidelines of a presentation of annual weather data for Greece.
A 56-year-old woman died on Wednesday evening after being carried away by floodwater and trapped under a car in the Athens hillside suburb of Ano Glyfada.
Hours earlier, a 53-year-old coastguard was hit by a wave and fatally hurt whilst trying to help locals secure their boats in the Peloponnese port town of Astros.