THIS summer in Spain is set to be hotter than average after an unusually warm month of May, wetter-than-normal June and the driest spring on record.
According to the State meteorological agency, AEMET, temperatures across the country will be a typical 1.5ºC warmer than usual – although the figures cover a huge variety of micro-climates from the sweltering and humid south and east coasts and islands, scorched and dry heat of the central plains, and the cool and damp summers in the Cantabrian Sea strip which are normally closer to those of the UK.
No real changes in rainfall for the time of year are forecast for July, August or September, and the months of April and May have been the driest since records began with the Mediterranean area now in its fourth year of a major drought.
But the recent downpours, mainly affecting the north and centre of the country but edging south and south-east for two days in the past week, mean June has seen more rain in 72 hours than it normally would throughout the whole month.
Summer in Spain officially starts this coming Sunday, June 21 at 18.38hrs, and the first day of the new season will mostly be cloudy with thunder and lightning inland, in the north and along the Pyrénées, with higher than usual temperatures due to the absence of a north wind, but with the cloud covering tempering the rocketing mercury.
This spring has already been the fourth-hottest since 1961 with thermometers rising to an average of 1.5ºC above the standard level seen between 1981 and 2010, putting the typical temperature of the country as a whole at 15.1ºC – although this ranges from minus figures at night and single figures in the day in the north and centre-north, up to the high 20s and even low 30s on occasion in the south and east.
So far, only the springs of 1997, 2006 and 2011 have been warmer than the present one in the past 54 years.
The above-average heat rose throughout the spring creating a wider and wider margin as the weeks went on – March was 0.3ºC warmer than average, whilst April was 1.7ºC hotter and May 2.4ºC warmer.
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