Greece and its farmers have been hit with flooding of “historic proportions”, according to the country’s Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.

Vast swathes of Greece’s agricultural heartland have been left devastated by the record rainfall, with thousands of acres of crops and fields damaged.

Between 4 and 7 September, Greece endured a four-day storm that dropped 910mm (3ft) of rain on central parts of the country. The record rainfall triggered deadly flooding and inundated towns and farm fields in Thessaly, a region predominantly used for agricultural production.

The flooding was fuelled by a stalled low-pressure storm that became cut-off from the jet stream, also known as a cut-off low, which dropped heavy rainfall on central Greece.

The storm dropped the most rain on Zagora, near Thessaly’s port town of Volos, according to the country’s weather service. About 100km inland, the town of Karditsa saw 659mm (2ft) of rain.

Impact

Following a meeting with European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen in Strasbourg on Tuesday, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis outlined the damage of the flooding and the well-documented wildfires which occurred in the weeks prior.

“I would first and foremost address the gravity of the situation at hand. Greece has over the past month endured two devastating natural disasters of historic proportions. The megafire in the region of Evros is the largest fire in Europe’s history.

“And if that was not enough, then we were hit by the massive storm Daniel, which hit the regions of Thessaly and central Greece particularly hard.

"We’ve had the worst floods in our history. This is probably one of the most powerful storms to ever hit Europe,” he said.

Mitsotakis said there has been “massive damage” to Greece’s agricultural production.

Response

Von der Leyen said that Europe will support Greece in its recovery from the natural disasters.

“For the first time, we see that your country faced the most dramatic wildfires that the EU has ever seen. Never ever before such a vast area has been destroyed by the wildfires. Then floods have devastated large regions of Greece,” she said.

Greek farmers have been hit with unprecedented flooding.

The Commission president said that the CAP’s resources could be one way of intervening to support Greece at this time.

“We’ll also look into funds under the current Greek CAP strategic plan and we will examine the agricultural reserve for next year. If we look at those funds, they could, for example, help restore forest or farming infrastructure,” she said.

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