Earth Changes
Rescue services reached 1,500 people trapped in cars, while skiers glided down Gran Via, normally one of the busiest streets in the capital. Other Madrid residents used the freak blizzard to snowboard down the road or pelt each other with snowballs.
A man and woman who were traveling in a car drowned after a river burst its banks near Malaga, southern Spain, and two homeless people froze to death, one in Madrid and the other in the eastern city of Calatayud, authorities said.
Responding to the events, King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia tweeted: "The royal family would like to express their sorrow for victims of the storm ... and ask for extreme caution against the risks of accumulation of ice and snow."
Interior minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska urged Spaniards to avoid all but essential travel. "We are facing the most intense storm in the last 50 years," he said.
Heavy rains started pounding the area at the beginning of the week. By Tuesday night it culminated in what could only be described as nightmarish floods in Casablanca. Public transport shut down and entire neighborhoods were flooded. A quick-witted Twitter user commented that the city is "slowly marking its transition to becoming the new Venice."
Casablanca, a home to over 3 million people has been ravaged by floods for over three days now, yet there are still no concrete reports on the scope of infrastructural damage to the city.
The people of Casablanca are in shock, sharing pictures of the apocalyptical weather and floods on social media. Horror stories of destroyed infrastructure, monstrous traffic, and closed schools and businesses are flooding Twitter and other social media.

Authorities have stepped up rescue operations after locals complained they had to fend for themselves earlier this week.
Authorities have stepped up rescue operations after locals complained they had to fend for themselves earlier this week.
Heavy rains continued to batter the region on Friday, swelling the number of people abandoning their homes to more than 47,000, officials said.
"I have lost everything. The water has covered my roof," 59-year-old factory worker Tan Kong Leng told AFP news agency, tears filling his eyes.
The footage from Friday and Saturday shows rescue operations at Gora Otdelnaya ski resort whereby a 14-year-old boy was found alive and transported to a hospital.
According to the Russian Investigative Committee, the bodies of a 38-year-old woman, her 45-year-old husband and their one and half-year-old child were recovered.
The institution opened a criminal case in accordance with article 238 of the Criminal Code of Russia.
All rescue operations were completed on Saturday morning.
The body of the victim, identified as Sara Noemi Gaspani, 58, was found being mauled by the pack of dogs in Buenos Aires in Argentina on Boxing Day.
The woman worked as a local teacher and had been jogging in a suburban area of the city where three dogs were found eating part of her body.
An autopsy indicated, however, that around six dogs had taken part in the initial attack.
It also confirmed the suspicion that the dogs had not simply found the corpse and started eating it, but in fact, had attacked her causing a "fast and traumatic" death from multiple bite wounds.
The extratropical storm saw its central pressure fall to a record 921 millibars from 972 millibars in 24 hours, making it the strongest storm in that basin in at least 60 years, and also setting records for Alaska and the Bering Sea in its path onwards.
Meanwhile, a global record for the highest mean sea-level pressure was broken in Mongolia, central Asia, barely days before. A recording of 1094.3 millibars came hand-in-hand with bitingly low temperatures of -45.5C (-50F) in Tsetsen-Uul in the western Zavkha province.
This year, on the other hand, opened with a disruptive ice storm across the midwest and Great Lakes of the US. Ice storms, or freezing rain, occur as raindrops falling vertically through the atmosphere move into a thin layer of sub-freezing air near the earth's surface. This allows the droplets to become supercooled and freeze upon contact with any objects, creating extremely hazardous conditions such as ice coats the ground. In the southern hemisphere, the first storm of the season was birthed. Tropical Cyclone Imogen made landfall in the Shire of Carpentaria in Queensland, Australia, on Monday, with reports of over 260mm of rain falling in Karumba.
Comment: For more information on extreme weather events, check out SOTT's monthly documentary SOTT Earth Changes Summary - December 2020: Extreme Weather, Planetary Upheaval, Meteor Fireballs
The cold weather has also brought thousands of motorists up into the mountains in search of rare wintry scenes.
They haven't been disappointed, but authorities are urging caution: people here are unused to driving in snow.
Parts of the world have been struck by extreme cold and snowfall.
Spain saw a record MINUS 34-point-1 degrees Celsius in the Catalan Pyrenees on Wednesday their lowest temperature in history.
The BBC reports snow and "nasty" wet and wintry conditions are expected in the country and neighboring Portugal,... over the next few days.
It says cold air originating in Russia is moving across Europe.
In China, temperatures plummeted to minus 19-point-six in Beijing,... the lowest since 1966.

A1M Motorway in County Durham is currently grid locked with traffic queuing for miles
An arctic blast from Greenland has left the country shivering as snow was dumped overnight and leaving treacherous conditions on the roads.
Temperatures fell to -15C in some spots, with yellow warnings issued for most of the country today by the Met Office.
It comes as another Beast from the East is set to arrive next week, with snowstorms and extreme temperatures expected to batter Britain in the cold blast.
Despite emergency services performing vigorous CPR on the victim, who was in her early 20s, she died at the scene.
A rāhui has been placed around the area by local iwi as whānau gathered to mourn at a Coastguard building at the Bowentown end of Waihī Beach on Thursday night, where the victim's body was believed to be laying.
As the night came to a close, a group of locals and holidaymakers lit candles and had drinks in memory of the victim on the beach itself.
Comment: Express reports: The ice age cometh? A few days ago Spain recorded its lowest temperature ever at -34C.