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Portugal and Spain are once more recovering from extensive flooding after Tempest Claudia brought heavy rain and powerful gusts the previous week.

The Storm's Formation and Trajectory

This meteorological event developed from a low-pressure zone that had earlier driven unseasonably early freezing temperatures and snowfall through eastern parts of the Canadian territory and the north-eastern US in early November.

This storm tracked eastwards across the Atlantic over the second weekend of November before slowing and stalling to the northwestern area of the Iberian peninsula, caught in the trough of an increasingly amplified air current.

Impact on Spain and Portugal

Galicia in north-west Spain was hit first, with three to six inches of rain coming down along its west coast in just a single day up to the evening of Wednesday as a leisurely moving system of rain pushed across the western sectors of the peninsula.

More downpours and stormy weather on Thursday last week brought flooding to Portuguese localities where an older couple lost their lives in the capital Lisbon after water from the overflowing Tagus River invaded their residence as they were asleep.

Tempestuous weather continued into the weekend, with a violent whirlwind tearing through a outdoor lodging area and a adjacent hotel in the town of Albufeira in southern Portugal on Saturday last week, fatally injuring an 85-year-old British woman and harming 28 individuals.

Broader Impacts across the European continent

The storm produced wider effects across the western European nations. By siphoning heated air from the warmer regions, the system assisted in raising temperatures in southwestern France to nearly 30 degrees Celsius, the state's maximum ever November temperature.

By the following Friday, this warm and humid air mass collided with a chilly atmospheric body across the northern regions of Europe, generating a precipitation zone running from the west of Ireland to the Russian Federation.

In the United Kingdom, this halting system of rain brought exceptionally large precipitation amounts, leading to significant waterlogging in the principality of Wales.

As this weather phenomenon progressively weakens in the coming days, the cold air mass will advance southward, providing the continent its initial glimpse of the winter season.

Simultaneous Occurrences in the state of California

The US state of California encountered a plume of tropical moisture recently, bringing intense precipitation and high-velocity gusts that led to sudden inundations and mudslides in zones scarred by wildfires earlier this year.

In excess of 50 millimetres of rain fell in California's southern part on the week's end, with a additional two inches widely across the state on Saturday.

In excess of 100 millimetres of rain accumulated over shoreline regions of Southern CA in total, hitting a full 200 millimetres in spots on high ground.

Such a weather system is a plume of warm, moist air stemming from the tropical or subtropical regions.

Regions previously burned including the Pacific Palisades area and the town of Altadena suffered the most severe the flash flooding and mudslides, prompting evacuations.

In other parts of the state, a 71-year-old man passed away after his automobile was swept off a inundated overpass, and a seven-year-old girl and her father were dragged into the Pacific by big swells on the the state's central shoreline.