Unseasonably warm festive season predicted, but rain could put a damper on Christmas Day

The climate will remain stable from Boxing Day to New Year's Day, and warmer than usual for the time of year.

Between tomorrow (December 22) and Christmas Eve, the mercury is expected to rocket to figures more usually seen in a Mediterranean spring, but Christmas Day – unusually, given that this is usually a particularly mild time of year – is likely to see more turbulent climates and probably significant rainfall.

Daytime temperatures are not predicted to fall in the foreseeable future, due to a warm west wind travelling across the mainland and Balearic Islands, but the nights are expected to be considerably colder than at present.

This forecast comes after one of the warmest and most humid autumns on record – Spain's east coast saw average round-the-clock temperatures of 16.3ºC, at least 0.5ºC higher than normal, and 272 litres of rain per square metre (27.2 centimetres, or just under one foot), being 47 per cent more than is typical for the time of year.

The rainfall has been mostly concentrated into three major stormy episodes in September and November, which in Spain as a whole saw two-thirds of the annual rainfall for 2012.

Rain in Spain this year has been 12 per cent lower than usual, but the average temperature for 2012 has been 0.8ºC higher than normally seen throughout the country, making this the sixth-warmest year since 1960.