Airlines cancelled more than 200 flights in and out of Portugal, while schools and hundreds of supermarkets and businesses closed on Wednesday, as Storm Charles made landfall bringing heavy downpours and gale-force winds. No deaths were reported.

The government, criticised for its slow response to a succession of storms in January and February, had taken pre-emptive steps, putting all emergency services and army units on alert, cancelling classes, shutting non-essential public services and advising people to stay indoors. A nationwide state of alert took effect at midnight and was due to run through the end of the day, with 1,100 military personnel on standby.

Portugal’s weather service, IPMA, said the eye of the storm had split in two over the Atlantic, diminishing its strength when it arrived via the southern Algarve region. Civil Protection Commander Mario Silvestre said authorities were maintaining high alert levels for flash floods, wind and rough seas after registering 538 incidents since midnight, Reuters reported.

Storm Charles had already swept through the Madeira archipelago, where it dropped more rain in 12 hours than the storm behind the island’s deadliest disaster in 2010. Miguel Albuquerque, president of the Regional Government, said Charles dropped 479 millimetres of rain in 12 hours, more than the 387 millimetres recorded in the same window during the storm of 20 February 2010, which killed 47 people and left six missing. “We had a situation that surpassed February 20,” Albuquerque said at a briefing on Wednesday morning. Peak hourly rainfall reached 65 millimetres at 06:00, close to the 78 millimetres recorded in 2010.

By 09:00 on Wednesday, Civil Protection in Madeira had logged 205 occurrences linked to the storm, mobilising 542 personnel and 216 vehicles. Despite the scale of the operation, none of the incidents was considered serious, Albuquerque said. Emergency services rescued a man swept away when water flooded his garage, and a missing person was later rescued in São Roque. In Serra de Água, a family will have to be moved out of their home after a landslide, and two houses were identified as damaged by landslides and flooding, according to the Times of Madeira.

The most critical period came between 02:00 and 03:00, when heavy rain coincided with high tide and very high river flows, slowing the drainage of water downstream. Albuquerque said the city’s drainage infrastructure was built to handle exceptional rainfall peaks, but water naturally takes time to drain, especially where river flows are high. He thanked residents for their civic behaviour during the storm, saying it helped avoid more serious problems, and thanked firefighters, municipal councils and Civil Protection for their coordination.

Since Sunday, Portugal and neighbouring Spain have been battered by heavy rains brought by Storm Bruna, with flooding reported in several areas, including road tunnels in Lisbon, which were mostly shut on Wednesday. The new storm was expected to reach southwestern Spain on Wednesday afternoon, with the country’s weather service AEMET warning of “serious or very serious” impact from heavy rain, strong winds and rough seas that could worsen conditions caused by Storm Bruna.

In central Spain, authorities maintained the evacuation of more than 3,000 people in Piedralaves, whom they removed from their homes on Tuesday due to the risk of a local dam overflowing, and warned that rainfall was expected to intensify from midday.

Sources: Reuters and Times of Madeira.