Greece's last period of sustained bad weather was in 1975

The last time Greece had an extended period of unseasonal rainy weather was in mid-summer, such as that which started on August 21 and continued for seven consecutive days in most parts of the country, was 47 years ago, from July 30-August 5 in 1975.

The Athens Observatory of Athens weather service meteo.gr on Sunday presented the reasons for this rare spell of bad weather:

1) Why did it rain for so many days in Greece?

The main cause of the extended, intense and extensive rainfall was an atmospheric disturbance in the upper troposphere which originated in the North Atlantic and initially moved toward the broader region of the Adriatic and the northwest Balkans in the first phase, gradually bringing bad weather to Greece on August 20-21 in central and northern parts.

In the next two days, August 22-23, the atmospheric disturbance slowly moved toward Greece, causing a further deterioration in the weather throughout the country. Subsequently, in its third phase on August 24-26, the atmospheric disturbanced became "detached" from general circulation and settled over Greece in the form of a "cold lake", which combined with existing humid and unstable aerial masses to cause strong rain and storms at a local level in many parts of the country, creating extensive problems.

2) Where did it rain most?

There were significant quantities of rain throughout Greece with the exception of the West Peloponnese and the Ionian islands. The most precipitation was recorded in Amfiklia (156 mm of rain), Kavo Doro (155 mm), Zagora (117 mm) and Isoma, Kilkis (111 mm), Ardassa (107 mm), Metsovo (106 mm) and Velvendo (103 mm).

3) How much lightning fell?

The bad weather was accompanied by intense lightning activity, with more than 115,000 lightning flashes recorded by the Zeus Lightning detection Network. The day when lightning activity was most intense was on August 24, when 52,000 flashes of lightning were recorded throughout Greece.

4) How much damage was caused?

The many days of bad weather caused a large number of problems in many areas of the country, with one person struck by lightning in Drama on the first day and many more smaller-scale problems.

READ MORE: The AMAZING time-lapse video of Monday’s storm smashing Athens.