ClimavisoRain in Alicante: the northern coast gets twice the warnings of the city
Published 11 October 2026 · Climaviso
The province of Alicante has three warning zones. From 2019 to 2025, the northern coast (Dénia, Xàbia, Calp, Altea) had 212 days with a rain warning, 6 of them red. The southern coast, home to Alicante, Elche, Torrevieja and Benidorm, had 107: half as many.
The three zones
| Zone | Towns | Rain-warning days, 2019–2025 | Orange | Red | Yearly average |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Litoral norte de Alicante | Dénia, Xàbia, Calp, Altea, Teulada, Benissa | 212 | 55 | 6 | 30 |
| Interior de Alicante | Alcoy, Elda, Villena, Petrer, Ibi | 135 | 15 | 2 | 19 |
| Litoral sur de Alicante | Alicante, Elche, Torrevieja, Orihuela, Benidorm | 107 | 19 | 4 | 15 |
A day with a rain warning counts once, at its highest level.
The northern coast doesn't just get more warnings, it gets more serious ones. More than one in four of its rain-warning days was orange or red, against one in five on the southern coast and one in eight inland.
The same thresholds in all three zones
The comparison is direct because the three zones share thresholds. The yellow rain warning triggers at 20 litres per square metre in an hour or 60 in twelve hours; orange at 40 or 100; red at 90 or 180. They're the same across the Valencia region and higher than in most of Spain (15 and 40 for yellow): thresholds are set by each place's climate, and intense rain is more common on this coast.
Benidorm and Altea: neighbours, but not in the same zone
The border between the northern and southern coast runs between Benidorm, on the southern coast, and Altea, in the north. Two towns side by side, with different histories: 107 rain-warning days in Benidorm's zone, 212 in Altea's. Each warning is issued for a whole zone, so what separates their numbers isn't the street but the zone line. More in Spain's 182 warning zones.
The red days
| Date | Zones with a red rain warning |
|---|---|
| 21 and 22 April 2019 | Northern coast |
| 12 and 13 September 2019 | All three zones |
| 4 March 2022 | Southern coast |
| 25 and 26 September 2022 | Northern coast |
| 10 October 2025 | Southern coast |
On 12 and 13 September 2019, during the DANA that flooded the Vega Baja del Segura, all three Alicante zones had a red rain warning at the same time, the only time in these years.
September, the busiest month
In all three zones, September has the most rain-warning days. But on the northern coast the season is long: March and October add up to almost as much as September, and no month is without any.
| Zone | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Northern coast | 7 | 1 | 31 | 14 | 20 | 11 | 8 | 17 | 38 | 28 | 18 | 19 |
| Inland | 3 | 0 | 12 | 6 | 26 | 15 | 7 | 16 | 32 | 12 | 2 | 4 |
| Southern coast | 0 | 0 | 15 | 6 | 16 | 6 | 3 | 6 | 26 | 15 | 6 | 8 |
Rain-warning days in each month, 2019 to 2025 combined.
2025, the busiest year
| Zone | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026* |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Northern coast | 22 | 20 | 23 | 43 | 28 | 30 | 46 | 18 |
| Inland | 12 | 15 | 11 | 22 | 27 | 15 | 33 | 15 |
| Southern coast | 14 | 10 | 13 | 19 | 16 | 11 | 24 | 9 |
*2026, up to 11 October.
2025 had the most rain-warning days on record in all three zones. 2026 is running lower, although autumn, the season with the most warnings, has only just begun.
A warning isn't what fell
These numbers count warnings, that is, forecasts that a threshold will be exceeded somewhere in the zone. They don't measure how much rain fell in each town or what damage there was. For measured rainfall, AEMET publishes its climate summaries (Spanish).
To see your town's warnings day by day since 2018, look it up on the map or browse the towns of Alicante.
Sources
- Warnings: AEMET's warning archive (CAP format, AEMET OpenData), collected by Climaviso since June 2018.
- Rain thresholds by zone: AEMET, Meteoalerta plan, annex 1 (31 May 2022, Spanish).
Towns in this article
A warning is not damage; a zone is not a building.