Timelapse shows lightning moving across Spain after Valencia floods

A shocking timelapse video has revealed the devastating frequency of lightning strikes hitting Spain's southern and eastern coast as the country is battered by flooding that has already killed more than 200 in Valencia alone. 

The video, shared by WxNB, a weather mapping service, showed tourist hotspots including Malaga, Marbella and Murcia being inundated with lightning strikes at around 3am on Tuesday night as heavy rains poured down. 

Lightning was then seen moving up the east coast of Spain, pounding Alicante and Benidorm, before ending up in Valencia, which was devastated by floods that night. 

Storms also moved further inland from the south coast, bombarding Seville, before eventually passing over Madrid and Zaragoza, as another cell briefly hit Barcelona. 

Parts of the Valencia region in eastern Spain were deluged by more than a year's worth of rain in just eight hours on Tuesday causing monstrous flash floods. 

The torrents of water destroyed whole villages and an unknown number of people are still missing with the death toll only expected to rise.   

Images taken on Thursday show wrecked cars abandoned on highways stained with brown mud and other bits of debris. 

'Unfortunately, there are dead people inside some vehicles,' Spain's transport minister Oscar Puente warned today. 

A 71-year-old British man who was suffering from hypothermia was identified as one of the dead on Wednesday afternoon.

Walls of rushing water turned narrow streets into death traps and spawned rivers that ripped into the ground floors of homes and swept away everything in its path.

The aftermath, which has seen streets piled high with vehicles and water streaming down usually busy roads, looks eerily similar to the damage left by a strong hurricane or tsunami.

Wrecked vehicles, tree branches, downed power lines and household items all covered in a layer of mud covered the streets of Utiel, just one of dozens of towns in the hard-hit region.

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Police revealed today that looters have taken advantage of the catastrophic floods, robbing abandoned stores of high-value goods including computers, mobile phones and perfume. 

Thirty nine suspects have been arrested in the Valencia region so far as the Civil Guard continues to crack down on people hoping to gain from the chaos.

Meanwhile desperate families have resorted to taking food and water from supermarkets, with heart-wrenching pictures showing children picking through the aisles of wrecked food stores.

The army has been brought in to manage the search and rescue operation with 1,000 members of the Spanish Armed Forces mobilised yesterday. 

One terrifying clip shows an entire bridge in Valencia being washed away in the floods. 

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Paiporta bridge in the town of the same name was left completely devastated as the river beneath burst its banks and continued to rise.

Horrified onlookers watched in horror as the concrete structure crumbled into the deluge.

The scenes in Paiporta - where at least one baby was counted among the dead - are among many to have been captured by locals.

Rainfall in the town of Chiva in Valencia reached a staggering 491 litres per square metre on Tuesday, according to Spain's meteorological agency.

The town, just 20 miles west of Valencia, endured this amount of rain in just eight hours - the typical amount of rain seen in a full year and an 'extraordinary accumulation', the agency added.