Joc's Weekly Blogs

Malta has recently been having many droughts and is becoming a very frequent hazard.  Malta has experienced a number of flash floods in recent years, during which time intense  rainfall has caused surface runoff to flow within urban areas.   Flooding problems as a result of uncontrolled street surface runoff occur in the urbanized areas  of various basins of the Maltese Islands.  The flash flooding usually occurs in the  lower parts of these catchments, as a result of heavy storms which cause a reactivation of the  valley channel leading to uncontrolled street surface runoff passing through the low lying urbanized areas. Flooding from coastal waters usually results in the formation of puddles of seawater along some of the roads that are located directly at the water’s edge.  Seawater flooding is rather uncommon in Malta but can sometimes occur where there is a combination of high tide and heavy rainfall or as a result of atmospheric gravity w...

RIP CURRENTS IN SPAIN Under specific conditions along a seacoast or lakeshore, powerful currents form that carry large amounts of water away from the shore: rip currents. Rip currents develop when a series of large waves piles up water between the longshore bar and the swash zone.  On average, around 500 people die each year in Spanish coastal waters alone, in many cases, they succumb to deadly rip currents. Antonio de la Cruz, a geologist who helped prepare a report by the Camilo José Cela University, blames powerful rip currents. “These are not the typical currents found between the waves, instead, they are like rivers that pull swimmers out to sea,” he says. These types of currents are produced by gusts of wind that whip up the waves. The problem, particularly on beaches in Valencia, is that a huge amount of water reaches the shoreline, but the lack of depth means there isn’t enough space, and it is pushed out powerfully to sea. Spain waters have lot of rip currents and t...