Another scare on Montserrat mountain. This Tuesday, a new landslide forced the closure of the BP-1103 road, as reported by the Catalan Traffic Service. On its Twitter profile, park management of the famous Catalan mountain has published a video showing how heavy rain has caused this new landslide. This incident comes after another landslide occurred last Friday, which forced the evacuation of the monastery hotel.
It was last Friday when the heavy rain on Montserrat caused a major landslide of water, rocks and vegetation near the hotel in the grounds of the historic Benedictine Abbey. According to the Meteocat weather service, nearly 30 litres/m2 of water fell in half an hour (via other measurement systems, that's 30mm, or 1.2 inches). The monastery informed the ACN news agency that the landslide had taken place behind the back wall of Hotel Abat Cisneros and that it mostly affected the kitchen area. The people who were in the hotel left the building and about forty people who were eating in the restaurant at the time were evacuated. Saturday June 10th marked the 23rd anniversary of the Montserrat flash flood event in the year 2000 that caused the death of five people.
The news from ElNacional.cat's weatherman Xavi Freixes is that all this wet weather is going to come to a temporary end on Tuesday night. Wednesday morning, sunny and very hot. However, by Wednesday afternoon, the storms will reappear in the interior regions of Barcelona and Girona, although much less intense than Tuesday's precipitation. Then the sun will be back, from Thursday onwards, with a hot weekend ahead - up to 35ºC in Lleida and 33ºC in Tortosa this Saturday.
Below, images from this Tuesday's heavy rain in different parts of Catalonia: