The met. office in the Balearics is monitoring the storm. | AEMET

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The Balearic government has asked the general public to exercise the utmost caution over the next few hours and days in the face of the orange weather warning that has been activated due to the risk of heavy rain and to listen to the instructions from the Directorate General for Emergencies.

Government spokesman for the government, Antoni Costa, today called for maximum caution, indicating that the situation is pre-alert but that these meteorological phenomena can change the situation unexpectedly. The 112 Emergency Service has activated Severity Index 1 (IG1) of the Meteobal Plan for rain and storms in Mallorca and Menorca.
Friday is expected to be a “complicated day” with rainfall which could be as heavy as 50 litres per square metre.

The Isolated Depression at High Levels (DANA) that hit Valencia will approach Mallorca tomorrow, Friday, the deputy spokesman of the territorial delegation of the State Meteorological Agency (Aemet) in the Balearics, Bernat Amengual has warned. It will also be "complicated".

He has called for calm, as the weather front is not expected to bring such heavy rain. That said, Aemet has activated the orange alert as of Friday for heavy rain in Mallorca and Menorca. However, he said that its evolution will be closely monitored, as the DANAs tend to vary greatly and from Friday onwards is when Mallorca will have to be more vigilant, as the cyclogenesis will approach the island, according to the weather models forecast on Wednesday.

On Friday, a public holiday, temperatures will rise slightly and the wind will be light to moderate from the east and northeast and Amengual has forecast that on Saturday and Sunday the weather in Mallorca is expected to be very similar to that of 1 November. "We don't know how fast the DANA will move; we have to keep a close eye on it, because although it is weakening, it is still active," he said. At the moment, he said that it is not clear when the DANA will leave the region, "as it will continue to move over Spain for the next 10 days".

The torrential rains that have fallen in recent hours are beginning to lose intensity although severe rainfall warnings are still in place in 12 Spanish provinces, including Tarragona in the northeast and Castellón in the east, which is on orange alert for predicted rainfall of nearly 40 litres in one hour or 100 litres in 12 hours, according to the latest forecast by the State Meteorological Agency (Aemet).

Secretary of State for the Environment Hugo Morán said that the predictions and analysis worked “perfectly” but “the response mechanisms” did not adequately incorporate the alerts. “The prediction and analysis mechanisms have worked perfectly, they have been able to warn days in advance of what is going to happen; however, the subsequent response mechanisms have not adequately incorporated these warning messages,” he told EFE from the UN Biodiversity Conference (COP16) being held in Cali, Colombia. “These natural phenomena with which we were used to living are acquiring dimensions that are unknown and the response mechanisms are not adequate for those dimensions,” Morán added.