Meteorologists explain why Crete’s five-day storm caused such widespread damage

Crete is assessing the damage from five consecutive days of rain that researchers describe as one of the island’s most severe storms in at least 20 years. Kostas Lagouvardos, research director at the National Observatory of Athens and head of its METEO unit, said the storm’s length was the main factor behind the scale of destruction.

“It was a storm of very long duration. The rain lasted five whole days, from Wednesday through Sunday,” Lagouvardos said, adding that in some areas rain fell almost continuously throughout the period. “The duration is what led to this unprecedented volume of rain.”

The heavy rainfall affected all four of Crete’s regional units — Chania, Rethymno, Heraklion and Lasithi — where National Observatory of Athens stations recorded very high rainfall totals. At Samaria, the METEO station had recorded more than 800mm of rain by Sunday midday. At Anogia, the total had passed 660mm by the same time.

“For comparison, Athens records an average of 420mm of rain per year. In many areas of Crete, those totals were exceeded within one or two days,” Lagouvardos said.

Rainfall totals were lower in the island’s main towns — Heraklion, Chania and Rethymno — but gale-force winds caused damage there instead, including in the old town of Chania. Rainfall of this scale inevitably produces major 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, houses and farm roads were destroyed and animals were swept away by floodwater. On the Lasithi Plateau, crops have remained submerged for four days, and it will take time for the area to drain, he added.

“One of the most severe storms in at least 20 years”

Lagouvardos said the storm ranks among the most significant to hit Crete and Greece over time. A storm of comparable scale struck the island’s western side in February 2019, when storms known as Chionis and Okeanida caused widespread damage.

Given the conditions, Lagouvardos said this storm should have received an official name. “The forecast data clearly showed we would face a very intense and long-lasting rain episode. We had very good knowledge of what to expect — the storm had largely been forecast, though perhaps not for every area,” he said. “There were exceptions; in some places it rained somewhat more than expected, but the fact that we would face a major storm was known at least three days before the phenomena began.”

Asked why naming a storm matters, Lagouvardos said: “Naming shows the public that the weather phenomenon expected will be intense. It helps warn the population more effectively.” He noted that from Friday onward, during the storm’s second phase, authorities correctly issued several 112 emergency alerts.

High mountains and over-built coastlines

Michalis 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 across Crete, including the island’s terrain.

“Crete has high mountains. When rain falls at high altitude and moves downhill from the mountains, it creates erosion and flooding near the coast,” Diakakis said.

“The second point to note is that most of Crete’s beaches have a very dense built environment. They have large hotel complexes and old, densely built settlements constructed this way decades ago. As a result, the water coming down from the mountains cannot flow unobstructed to the sea, and cannot drain properly. This happens along almost the entire northern side of the island, and in several cases on the south side as well,” he said.

As elsewhere in Greece, Crete has also seen streambeds filled in and converted into roads or settlements over time. Diakakis said a key lesson from recent storms across Europe is that extreme weather is no longer required to cause major damage. “Spatial planning in an area plays a very important role, as does the extent to which residents understand early warnings and how the institutional framework is shaped after such disasters,” he said.

Authorities have begun site inspections to record the extent of the damage across the island, as flooded farmland on the Lasithi Plateau and other affected areas continue to drain, with saturated ground keeping flood risk elevated in parts of the island.