Crete’s storm ranks among the worst in 20 years, meteorologists say

Crete began assessing widespread damage on Monday from one of the most significant storms to hit the island in at least 20 years, according to Kostas Lagouvardos, research director at the National Observatory of Athens and head of its meteo unit, after five consecutive days of heavy rain from Wednesday through Sunday.

“It was a storm of very long duration. The rain lasted five whole days, from Wednesday through Sunday,” Lagouvardos said. “There were areas where it rained non-stop, almost without a break, during that five-day span. It was the duration that led to this unprecedented volume of rain.”

The heavy rainfall affected all four of the island’s regional units — Chania, Rethymno, Heraklion and Lasithi — with National Observatory of Athens stations in each recording very high totals, Lagouvardos said.

One mountain station recorded more than 800mm of rain by Sunday afternoon, while a station at Anogia recorded more than 660mm by the same time, according to Lagouvardos.

Lagouvardos drew a comparison to Athens to illustrate the scale of the rainfall. The capital records an average of 420mm of rain per year, he said, a total that was exceeded in many parts of Crete within a day or two — consistent with a comparison separately reported when Crete received in one day the rainfall Athens sees in a year, according to another forecaster.

In the island’s main cities — Heraklion, Chania and Rethymno — rainfall totals were comparatively small, Lagouvardos said. Strong winds still caused damage, including in Chania’s old town.

Storms of this scale inevitably cause extensive damage, Lagouvardos said. “Fortunately we had only one loss of human life. But the damage to infrastructure and crops was extensive,” he said. In Mylopotamos, homes and rural roads were destroyed and animals were swept away by floodwater, he said, echoing damage reported after a storm killed a livestock farmer in Rethymno as flooding hit Crete. On the Lasithi Plateau, crops have remained submerged for four days, Lagouvardos said, adding that draining the area will take time — conditions that led the Lasithi Plateau municipality to declare a state of emergency after the storm destroyed roads and crops.

One of the worst storms in at least 20 years

Lagouvardos said the event ranks among the major storms to have struck Greece and the island over time. A storm of comparable scale hit the western side of Crete in February 2019, when storms named Chionis and Okeanida struck, he said.

Given the forecast data available beforehand, Lagouvardos said the storm should have been formally named. “The forecast data clearly showed we would face a very intense, long-duration rain event. We had very good knowledge of what to expect,” he said, adding that the severity of the storm was largely predicted, though not in every area, at least three days before it began. Naming a storm signals to the public that an intense weather event is approaching and helps improve public warning, he said.

During the second phase of the storm, from Friday onward, several 112 emergency alerts were sent, which Lagouvardos said was the correct response.

High mountains and densely built coastlines

Mihalis Diakakis, assistant professor of extreme phenomena and natural disasters at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, said factors beyond rainfall volume contributed to the extent of the damage. One is the island’s terrain, he said: rain falling at high altitude moves down through ravines and gorges across Crete, producing erosion and flooding near the coast.

A second factor, Diakakis said, is that most of Crete’s coastal areas are very densely built, with large hotel complexes and old, dense settlements constructed decades ago. As a result, water flowing down from the mountains cannot drain unimpeded to the sea, a pattern he said occurs across most of the island’s north coast and in several areas on the south coast as well.

Diakakis also noted that, as elsewhere in Greece, streambeds in Crete have often been filled in and converted into roads or built-up areas. A key conclusion from recent storms across Europe, he said, is that extreme weather is no longer required to cause major damage. “Spatial planning in an area plays a very important role,” he said, “as does how well residents understand early warnings, and how the institutional framework develops after such disasters.”