'Rare atmospheric phenomenon' caused major blackouts as state of emergency declared in Spain and Portugal

Spain and Portugal suffered major blackouts yesterday (28 April) with states of emergency declared.

After the European countries were brought to a standstill, much of the power has now been recovered.

And while there has not yet been a clear cause determined; it has been suggested that it was due to a ‘rare atmospheric phenomenon.'

From people being left with half-finished haircuts to thousands of train passengers being left stranded, the Spanish prime minister said the country’s power grid lost the equivalent of 60 percent of its national demand in a matter of five seconds.

“We have never had a complete collapse of the system,” Pedro Sanchez added.

He asked for the public to refrain from speculation and that no theory about the cause of the mega outage has been discarded as they work to determine one.

A state of emergency was declared. (Stringer/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Sanchez described the problem as a ‘strong oscillation’, adding: “We are analysing all the potential causes without discarding any hypothesis.”

Portugal’s grid operator Ren claimed it was down to a fault in the Spanish grid.

It released a statement saying the outage was: “Due to extreme temperature variations in the interior or Spain, there were anomalous oscillations in the very high voltage lines (400 KV), a phenomenon known as 'induced atmospheric vibration.'”

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It added: “These oscillations caused synchronisation failures between the electrical systems, leading to successive disturbances across the interconnected European network."

Ren also said that due to the complexity of the problem, it could take up to a week for things to fully get back to normal.

Spanish power distributor Red Electrica declined to speculate on the causes of the massive blackout as its head of operations, Eduardo Prieto, said the whole thing was ‘exceptional and extraordinary.'

People were left stranded in stations. (LLUIS GENE/AFP via Getty Images)

And a statement from the Portuguese National Cybersecurity Centre said there was no sign it was due to a cyber attack.

With Spain now having more than 99 percent of its power recovered, yesterday has been described as ‘one of the most serious episodes recorded in Europe in recent times.'

Areas of France also lost power but the outage hit Spain and Portugal the hardest.

Offices were shut and traffic ended up gridlocked as traffic lights stopped working. While some apps were working, it wasn’t possible to make calls on some mobile phone networks.

A graph on Spain’s electricity network website showing demand across the country indicated a steep drop at around 12.15pm from 27,500MW to near 15,000MW.