"More than 2,850 people have been rescued since the beginning of the bad weather," fire department spokesman Yannis Artopios told broadcaster Mega on Saturday.
"There are still many people in the villages around Karditsa, Palamas and toward Trikala. They are not missing, they are trapped," he said.
Greek civil protection authorities said Saturday evening that seven people were officially listed as missing, including an Austrian couple visiting the area around the picturesque peak of Pelion in the Thessaly region of northeastern Greece.
Several houses remain under water in the village of Palamas and rescue workers were trying to reach marooned people, an AFP journalist said.
"It was truly hellish," said 54-year-old Palamas resident Eleni Patouli.
"We were stuck without help or information for hours. The (emergency services) 112 message to evacuate arrived just as we were facing up to the flooding and we had no means of escape," she told AFP.
The situation also remains worrying near the city of Larissa, a few kilometres to the east.
"We are having great difficulties with the Pinios river, next to the city of Larissa, which has overflowed and reached a height of 2.5 metres (eight feet) on the outskirts of Larissa," Artopios said.
The flooding has laid waste to thousands of hectares of rich agricultural land and farmers have also lost substantial livestock numbers.
- 'Extreme' weather event -
"We are devastated. More than 1,500 pigs have drowned -- 70 percent of our farm suffered damage," said 58-year-old Thomas Kasos.
In the port city of Volos, the water supply has become a problem, since pumping stations and a large part of the supply network were damaged. The health ministry has warned that the water is not suitable for drinking.
"Gastroenteritis cases have appeared and there is a risk of that increasing if people don't have enough water. Authorities need to distribute at least two litres of drinking water to everyone," Elena Riza, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Athens School of Medicine, told public broadcaster ERT.
Traffic also remained challenging Saturday with the highway connecting Thessaloniki, the country's second largest city, and the capital Athens cut off in several places.
The storm, named "Daniel", struck the central coastal region of Magnesia on Monday and Tuesday before hitting other towns such as Karditsa and Trikala further inland on Wednesday.
Experts have described the event as "extreme in terms of the amount of water falling in a space of 24 hours".
The heavy rains and flooding follow devastating fires in Greece this summer that killed at least 26 people.
As the world warms, the atmosphere contains more water vapour which increases the risk of heavy precipitation in some parts of the world, notably in Asia, Western Europe and Latin America.
Combined with other factors such as urbanisation and land-use planning, these more intense rainfall events contribute to flooding.
Severe flooding in neighbouring Turkey and Bulgaria this week left 12 people dead.
Death toll from heavy rains in Spain rises to five
Madrid (AFP) Sept 8, 2023 -
The death toll from heavy rains that lashed most of Spain last weekend rose to five Friday after police recovered the bodies of two men who had been reported missing.
And fears were growing for the fate of a sixth person, a woman missing from Toledo, central Spain.
The body of an 83-year-old man swept away by floodwaters in the town of Villamanta near Madrid was recovered seven kilometres (four miles) from where he went missing, said Guardia Civil police force spokeswoman Ana Martin.
Police also found the body of a 47-year-old whose car had been swept away by a swollen river in the nearby town of Aldea del Fresco, she added.
Emergency services on Monday rescued his wife and two children who were also in the vehicle.
They included his 10-year-old son, who had spent the night perched in a tree above the floodwaters.
The head of the regional government of Madrid, Isabel Diaz Ayuso, offered her condolences in a post on X, formerly Twitter, and paid tribute to the work of the rescue services.
"Our love to their families and to the area residents and police and emergency services workers who did not stop looking for them," she wrote. "We stand by you."
The weekend storm, which swept across the whole country, transformed streets into raging torrents, hurled cars into rivers and washed away roads and bridges.
The storms disrupted travel for tens of thousands of people on the final weekend before the start of the new school year.
The high-speed rail links between the Spanish capital and the southwestern region of Andalusia and the east coast region of Valencia was one main travel forced to close.
Rescuers had already found the bodies of three men on Monday in the central province of Toledo.
Emergency services are still looking for a woman missing from the town of Valmojado in Toledo.
Scientists warn that extreme weather such as heatwaves and storms is becoming more intense as a result of climate change.
Record rain in parts of Japan after tropical storm
Tokyo (AFP) Sept 9, 2023 -
Parts of Japan have been deluged by their heaviest daily rains since records began, officials said Saturday, with reports of more than 100 landslides after a tropical storm.
Mobara city in Chiba prefecture, which borders the capital Tokyo, recorded 392 millimetres of rain overnight into Saturday -- the largest amount to hit the city in a 24-hour span since the Japan Meteorological Agency began the survey in 1976.
The deluge comes at the end of a rain-sodden week for East Asia, after southern Chinese cities were hit by record-breaking downpours that inundated major cities, and Typhoon Haikui toppled trees and caused flooding in Taiwan.
Deadly rains have also hit southern Europe.
Scientists say climate change is intensifying the risk of heavy rain globally, because a warmer atmosphere holds more water.
On Friday, tropical storm Yun-yeung disrupted some railway services and left thousands of households without power in Chiba, Ibaraki and Fukushima regions.
In Mobara, "a river near the city hall flooded on Friday and a car that was running nearby had to be rescued", a city spokesman told AFP.
"The water was overflowing to about waist height," he said, adding that levels had mostly receded by the morning.
He said officials "haven't been able to grasp the full extent of damage".
Two other areas saw around 280 millimetres in 24 hours, according to the weather agency.
There were more than 100 landslides in the region due to heavy rain, public broadcaster NHK reported.
A Chiba prefectural official told AFP that the government flew two helicopters on Saturday to examine damaged areas.
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