Some 600 vehicle occupants were surprised by the intensity of the snowfall that fell this Friday afternoon on the national highway N-122, between the ports of Madero and Omeñaca (between Soria capital and Ágreda). Shortly before 11:00 p.m. they managed to resume their march after more than six hours trapped in the area and once the roadway had been cleaned by the road maintenance machinery.
Usecic (Citizen Security Unit) and Civil Guard Traffic patrols escorted the trapped vehicles in the direction of Soria. The work has allowed all the light vehicles, around four hundred, that remained trapped, to be released; An hour later they managed to start the hundred heavy vehicles that still remained in the affected area.
The Military Emergency Unit (UME) of Zaragoza mobilized several troops to collaborate with the emergency services deployed with the aim of releasing the drivers as soon as possible, given that the forecast of a drop in temperatures that could reach 14 degrees below zero during the evening.
According to sources from the General Directorate of Traffic (DGT), the snow storm affects 63 roads, six of the main network and 57 of the secondary. In this sense, the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, sent a message calling for caution. “Let’s be very cautious and follow the recommendations of the DGT,” he commented on X.
On the other hand, in the capital, chaos has multiplied in the streets of the capital of Soria with a layer of snow ten centimeters thick that has forced the suspension of urban and interurban transport this Friday and Saturday.
In addition to Soria, other affected points of the road network are in Cantabria and La Ribera in Navarra, as well as several roads in the provinces of Burgos and Guadalajara.
The storm has also caused the match between Real Zaragoza and Andorra, which was played yesterday, to be suspended due to the snow storm, which left the La Romareda grass impassable. The club’s services attempted to remove the snow, but at the start of the match only approximately a third of it had been removed.
One of the regions most affected by Storm Juan is Extremadura, with nine of the ten Spanish municipalities with the heaviest rains until this afternoon, starting with Alcuéscar (Cáceres) with 60 liters per square meter, and Serradilla (Cáceres) and Badajoz, both over 55.
The storm has forced the Extremadura Government to preventively activate the Special Flood Risk Civil Protection Plan for the entire region, while the Badajoz City Council applied its own Municipal Emergency Plan after the flooding of streets and roundabouts. While in Cáceres, the Guadiloba reservoir keeps all its side gates open to relieve the volume of water accumulated in the last few hours, which had already exceeded the safety level of 85%.
The rain has also increased the flow of other rivers, such as those of Bullaque and Estenilla in the Guadiana basin in the province of Ciudad Real. In Cuenca, the increase in the flow of the Júcar River as it passes through the city has gone from 4 to 43 cubic meters per second, while the La Toba reservoir is approaching its maximum capacity.
Barcelona, ??too, with its sights set on the announced restrictions due to the level of the reservoirs, has received rain with hope this Friday, although for the moment in insufficient quantities to solve the serious drought problem in Catalonia. Where the almost 40 liters per square meter in Torredembarra (Tarragonès), 37.2 liters in Tarragona, and 35.5 liters in l’Ametlla de Mar (Baix Ebre) stand out.
The State Meteorological Agency (Aemet) predicts that the storm, which moves quickly from west to east of the peninsula, will discharge until early Saturday morning, with special strength and persistence in the center and southwest of the peninsula, especially in the Southern Central System of the Iberian Peninsula and the northeast of the Southern Plateau. Already at dawn on Saturday, the snow level dropped in the extreme northwest and in the interior of the Terres de l’Ebre to a range of between 200 and 500 meters. During the afternoon the snow reached the entire pre-Pyrenees and the eastern Pyrenees.
