Storm Kristin Batters Portugal With Record Winds, Leaving Central Regions Devastated

A rare, explosively intensifying cyclone

The wind arrived before dawn.

Just after 4 a.m. on Jan. 28, residents in Portugal’s central Leiria and Coimbra districts woke to a roar many later compared to a jet engine. Windows bowed and rattled. Roof tiles tore free and clattered down narrow streets. In Leiria, colored panels on the city’s Euro 2004 football stadium peeled away in sheets. At a wind farm near the village of Degracias, in Soure, an anemometer briefly clocked a gust of 208.8 kph (129.8 mph) before going offline.

By daylight, swaths of pine forest lay flattened, high‑voltage lines dangled from snapped poles and thousands of homes were roofless. Meteorologists would soon identify the culprit — Storm Kristin — a rare, explosively intensifying Atlantic cyclone and, by some wind measurements, the strongest storm ever recorded in Portugal.

Kristin struck the Portuguese mainland in the early hours of Jan. 28 after rapidly deepening over the Atlantic. Named two days earlier by the Portuguese Institute for Sea and Atmosphere (IPMA), the compact storm slammed into central and northern Portugal before racing east across Spain and into the western and central Mediterranean through Jan. 31.

Provisional data from national meteorological agencies and European weather centers indicate Kristin generated record or near‑record wind gusts in Portugal, overtopping previous benchmarks set by ex‑Hurricane Leslie in 2018 and Cyclone Xola in 2009. At least nine people were killed across affected countries — six directly and three indirectly — and more than 1 million electricity customers lost power at some point as the storm swept from Iberia toward the Balkans and Ukraine.

“This was an extreme and unprecedented meteorological event that placed enormous pressure on civil protection and emergency services across the country,” a spokesperson for Portugal’s National Authority for Emergency and Civil Protection said in an initial assessment.

Explosive cyclogenesis and a possible “sting jet”

IPMA described Kristin as a case of ciclogénese explosiva, or explosive cyclogenesis, a process where atmospheric pressure in a mid‑latitude storm drops by at least 24 hectopascals in 24 hours, dramatically strengthening the system. The storm’s central pressure fell rapidly as it approached the Portuguese coast, tightening the pressure gradient and driving hurricane‑force winds along its southern flank.

Meteorologists say Kristin likely developed a sting jet — a narrow, intense ribbon of fast‑descending air that can produce sudden, localized bursts of extremely strong wind. Sting jets have been implicated in several of western Europe’s most destructive windstorms, including the Great Storm of 1987 over the United Kingdom and France, but are still considered relatively rare.

“In Portugal we classify this as a rare phenomenon,” an IPMA meteorologist said in a briefing, warning of an “aggravation of weather conditions” even after the initial violent gusts abated. Early analyses from European forecast centers and national agencies indicate Kristin evolved into a warm‑seclusion cyclone, a structure known to favor sting‑jet formation.

The suspected sting jet coincided with the most severe damage in central Portugal between roughly 3:30 a.m. and 6 a.m. on Jan. 28. In that window, instruments at Monte Real Air Base near Leiria registered gusts around 176 to 178 kph, while a coastal station at Cabo Carvoeiro near Peniche recorded about 150 kph. The unconfirmed 208.8 kph reading at Degracias, if validated by IPMA, would be the highest wind gust ever measured on mainland Portuguese territory.

A trail of destruction in central Portugal

For residents, the statistics told only part of the story.

In Leiria, Mayor Gonçalo Lopes said the city had endured one of the “darkest” days in its history. The Dr. Magalhães Pessoa Stadium, which hosted matches during the 2004 European Championships, was left with gaping holes where façade panels and roof elements had been ripped away. Nearby, in the national forest, large stands of trees lay snapped or uprooted in long, linear corridors — a classic sign of concentrated, extremely strong winds.

Across the Leiria, Coimbra, Oeste and Médio Tejo regions, officials reported fallen trees crushing homes and cars, collapsing outbuildings and blocking major roads. In Ferreira do Zêzere, local authorities estimated up to 85% of the municipality’s housing stock had sustained some level of damage, from torn roofs and broken windows to more serious structural failures.

At the Sanctuary of Fátima, one of Catholicism’s most important pilgrimage sites, sections of roofing and exterior structures were damaged, forcing temporary closures and inspections. On the coast at Figueira da Foz, a Ferris wheel installed on the seafront was destroyed, and waves pounded sea walls and promenades already stressed by earlier winter storms.

Damage to critical facilities and mass outages

At Monte Real Air Base, home to a major part of Portugal’s F‑16 fighter fleet, the Air Force reported “significant material damage” after hangar roofs and large doors were torn off, damaging multiple aircraft stored inside. Photographs published by local media showed twisted metal structures and debris scattered across the tarmac. A smaller municipal aerodrome near Coimbra also suffered heavy damage to hangars and light aircraft.

Nationwide, civil protection authorities raised readiness to Level 4, the highest on Portugal’s scale, ahead of landfall. By early afternoon on Jan. 28, emergency services had logged more than 3,000 incidents linked to Kristin, mostly related to fallen trees, debris and structural damage.

At the storm’s peak, grid operator E‑Redes said around 1 million customers had lost electricity. About 570,000 remained without power by midday on Jan. 28, largely in central districts. The outages disrupted water treatment and pumping facilities in some municipalities, prompting warnings for residents to conserve water. Telecommunications lines also failed in parts of the country, leaving some communities effectively isolated for days.

Prime Minister Luís Montenegro described Kristin as an “extreme and unprecedented” event with a “profound impact” on several regions.

“The government has mobilized all available resources to support civil protection efforts,” Montenegro said after visiting damaged areas. He signaled the cabinet would consider declaring local states of calamity, a step that can speed up access to national and European Union disaster funds.

Spain and the Mediterranean feel the effects

As conditions slowly improved along Portugal’s western coast late on Jan. 28, Kristin’s center and associated fronts were already battering neighboring Spain. The State Meteorological Agency, AEMET, issued red alerts for extreme rainfall in parts of Galicia and for hurricane‑force gusts above 130 kph in portions of Almería province in Andalusia. Orange and yellow alerts covered much of the rest of the country for high winds and dangerous seas.

In Madrid, the storm’s passage ushered in a mass of cold air and rare measurable snowfall. Authorities closed or restricted some schools, highways and rail services as snow and ice accumulated on roads. Farther south, in Almería, officials reported hundreds of storm‑related incidents, from flooded underpasses to mountain roads blocked by snow and landslides. Segments of the A‑7 motorway near El Ejido were temporarily closed as gusts and heavy precipitation made driving hazardous.

Along the eastern Costa del Sol — particularly in towns such as Rincón de la Victoria, Vélez‑Málaga and Nerja — powerful waves chewed away beaches and promenades, leaving piles of rocks, sand and debris where tourist walkways had stood. In Torremolinos, a coastal resort west of Málaga, local media reported a woman was killed when a palm tree, weakened by saturated soil and high winds, fell onto her.

As the storm moved into the western and central Mediterranean on Jan. 29 and 30, it brought another round of disruption to Italy and Greece. Italy’s Civil Protection Department issued orange alerts in several central and southern regions for hydrogeological risks such as flash floods and landslides, as well as avalanche warnings in Alpine areas already burdened by heavy snow.

In Greece, the Hellenic National Meteorological Service issued an orange warning for a “temporary deterioration of the weather” as Kristin’s fronts crossed the country, forecasting heavy rain, thunderstorms, possible hail and southerly winds reaching force 8 to 9 on the Beaufort scale over the Ionian Sea and parts of the Aegean.

Northern Greece, including the Rhodope mountains, saw some of the heaviest rain, with about 125 millimeters recorded in a matter of hours. Rivers overtopped their banks, flooding roads and prompting emergency alerts to villages such as Ifaistos and Meleti. In the western town of Varda, in Ilia, streets turned into rivers as drainage systems were overwhelmed.

A “storm train” and lingering questions

By Jan. 31, the system that had been Kristin had weakened and become entangled with other low‑pressure areas over eastern Europe. A new storm, Patricia, was already forming in its wake, underscoring how little time battered communities had to recover before the next round of severe weather.

Kristin was part of a sequence of intense Atlantic storms — dubbed a “storm train” by some meteorologists — that struck Iberia and surrounding regions from late January onward. Storms Harry, Ingrid and Joseph hit in quick succession before Kristin, leaving soils saturated and infrastructure strained.

While scientists caution against attributing any single storm directly to climate change, several studies have suggested that a warming Atlantic and shifting jet‑stream patterns may favor more frequent or more intense autumn and winter windstorms affecting western Europe.

For Portugal, Kristin is likely to become a reference point in both meteorological records and public memory. If the Degracias gust is confirmed, the storm would stand as the country’s highest measured wind event, exceeding even ex‑Hurricane Leslie’s peak gusts. It also exposed vulnerabilities in rural housing, power and communications networks, and critical facilities ranging from air bases to religious sanctuaries.

In central Portugal’s forests, where toppled trunks now lie like scattered matchsticks, and in coastal towns where businesses survey collapsed promenades and shattered glass, the question is not only how to rebuild before the next storm season — but how, and whether, to build differently for a future in which such “rare” events may arrive more often.