A young girl was swept away by the waters in the far south, and another person, who was in a vehicle, is still being sought.
Torrential rains and floods have hit normally arid areas of Morocco and Algeria since Friday, September 6, where they have left at least one person dead and one person missing, after the rise in water levels. “exceptional” of a tropical air mass, official sources and an AFP correspondent reported on Sunday.
In the past 24 hours, the Ouarzazate region has received 47 millimeters of water in three hours and up to 170 mm in Taconite, near Zagora, not far from the Algerian border, according to Moroccan weather services. These heavy rains have hit regions of Morocco that have been hit by drought for at least six years. In Algeria, they have affected desert areas such as the Sahara, according to images on social networks.
According to the Algerian civil protection, a young girl was swept away by the waters in the Illizi area, in the far south, and another person, who was in a vehicle, is being sought in Tamanrasset, also in the far south. The civil protection indicated that it had carried out several rescues of families trapped by flooded rivers, in Illizi and Béchar in particular.
An unstable humid tropical air mass
Since Friday, the south and south-east of Morocco as well as certain areas of the Atlas have been affected “by an extremely unstable tropical air mass, due to the exceptional position of the Intertropical Front (ITF) over the south of the country”the spokesperson for the General Directorate of Meteorology in Morocco, Lhoussaine Youabd, told AFP. “Moist tropical air masses moved northward, meeting cold air masses, resulting in the formation of unstable and violent clouds.”he stressed.
These unusual conditions for these regions have caused “heavy thunderstorms and significant rainfall, leading to river flooding” and flooding, according to the official. In Ouarzazate, streets were flooded. “We haven’t had such rain for about ten years”resident Omar Gana told AFP.
Morocco is experiencing severe water stress after six consecutive years of drought, which had reduced dam levels to less than 28% by the end of August. The rains were accompanied by strong winds, reaching 100 kilometers per hour in Ouarzazate or 76 km/h in Marrakech, where they caused “an optical phenomenon, giving the sky an orange tint”.
