Storm Leslie struck Portugal on Sunday morning with winds of 176 km, tearing trees and leaving hundreds of thousands of homes without electricity, before reaching northern Spain, which was preparing for heavy rains.
The hurricane that roamed the Atlantic Ocean since September 23 turned into a post-tropical storm on its arrival on the Portuguese coast in the early hours of Sunday. A large part of the country had been placed on red alert.
"Right now, it is a post-tropical storm and it is already in the extreme north of the country, where it will rain again but the situation will quickly return to normal," said around 02 am local (01:00 GMT) the president of the Portuguese Meteorological Institute, Jorge Miranda, to the Lusa news agency.
Private power
Hundreds of thousands of people were without power and several dozens had to leave their homes. The hardest hit areas were the districts of Lisbon, Leiria (center) and Coimbra (center), where most of the incidents were related to torn trees, damaged roofs or small floods. "I had never seen such a thing. The city seemed to be in a state of war with cars crushed by fallen trees , " a resident of Figueira da Foz, about 200 km north of Lisbon, told SIC private television.
Blocked in a theater
"We were stuck for more than an hour in a theater, without electricity and without a telephone network. People were very worried, " he added.
In Spain, the Aemet meteorological service warned that the regions of Asturias, Leon and Cantabria would be particularly affected by the heavy rains that the storm brings to the north of the country.
Civil protection advised drivers to drive slowly and not to stop in areas that could be flooded. She also recommended residents to stay away from trees, roof cornices or construction sites.
Spain has been severely hit by heavy rains in Mallorca, where 12 people died in floods on Tuesday.
A very complicated night
In Portugal, the authorities recommended that people move away from coastal areas and avoid leaving their homes, warning against the risk of coastal flooding, falling trees and damage to energy networks and telecommunications.
The maritime authority advised fishermen who were at sea to reach the nearest port and the airline TAP Portugal has canceled seven flights departing or arriving from Lisbon. "We expect to experience a very complicated night especially because of the wind, which will increase very strongly and very fast. This is something we are not used to, " warned Setubal Harbor Captain Nicholson Lavrador on the public TV channel RTP.
Shortly before nightfall, the sea began to rage on the beaches south of the Portuguese capital, while surfers wanting to defy the swell were ordered to return to the shore.
A peninsula usually protected enough
According to the weather records quoted by the experts, only five hurricanes have arrived in this part of the Atlantic Ocean and Leslie would be the powerful to reach Portugal since 1842. In the last 176 years, only Hurricane Vince has touched down in the Iberian Peninsula, in southern Spain, in 2005.
In October 2017, the strong winds and the heat wave brought by Hurricane Ophelia, off Portugal and the Spanish region of Galicia, fueled forest fires that left some 40 people dead. land in Ireland in the form of a post-tropical storm, killing three people.