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Portugal and Spain are once more battling the aftermath of widespread flooding after Tempest Claudia delivered heavy rain and powerful gusts the previous week.

Claudia's Genesis and Journey

The storm system formed from a low-pressure zone that had earlier driven early season chilly and snowy weather through eastern parts of the Canadian territory and the north-eastern US during the beginning of the eleventh month.

This storm journeyed east across the Atlantic Ocean over the second weekend of November before slowing and stalling to the northwestern area of the Spanish and Portuguese landmass, caught in the trough of an ever more meandering jet stream.

Consequences for Spain and Portugal

The northwestern Spanish region of Galicia was initially impacted, with 80-150mm of rain coming down along its Atlantic coast in just a single day up to Wednesday evening as a leisurely moving system of rain crawled across western parts of the peninsula.

Additional rainfall and electrical storms on Thursday brought flooding to areas in Portugal where an elderly couple lost their lives in the capital Lisbon after water from the overflowing Tagus River entered their home as they rested.

Unsettled atmospheric states persisted into the weekend, with a tornado tearing through a campsite and a adjacent hotel in Albufeira in southern Portugal on the weekend's Saturday, fatally injuring an 85-year-old British woman and injuring two dozen and eight persons.

Broader Impacts across the European continent

The storm produced wider effects across Europe's western part. By pulling tropical air from the subtropics, the system assisted in raising temperatures in southwestern France to 85.6 degrees Fahrenheit, the nation's all-time high autumn temperature.

By last Friday, this warm and humid air mass collided with a frigid air system across the northern areas of the continent, forming a precipitation zone extending from western Ireland to the Russian Federation.

In the United Kingdom, this stalling band of rain delivered exceptionally large precipitation amounts, causing major inundations in Wales.

As Claudia loses strength in the coming days, the frigid air will move towards the south, providing the continent its initial glimpse of winter.

Parallel Events in California, USA

California encountered an "atmospheric river" the previous week, bringing intense precipitation and powerful winds that resulted in rapid flooding and landslides in zones affected by wildfires in the recent past.

In excess of 50 millimetres of rain fell in the southern region of the state on the week's end, with a further 50mm across extensive areas of California on Saturday.

Over four inches of rain was deposited on shoreline regions of the state's south in all, reaching eight inches in total in areas of elevated terrain.

This meteorological feature is a plume of tropical, saturated air stemming from the tropics or subtropics.

Burn scar areas including the Pacific Palisades area and Altadena suffered the worst of the rapid inundations and landslides, leading to evacuations.

In other parts of the state, a elderly male passed away after his automobile was swept off a submerged bridge, and a young girl aged seven and her father were pulled into the sea by large waves on the California's Central Coast.