WEATHER experts are forecasting a hotter-than-usual summer in Spain this year, just over 24 hours before the most-awaited season begins.
Officially, summer starts in Spain at 17.54 mainland time (16.54 in the Canary Islands) exactly on Friday (June 21), the longest day of the year, and its temperatures will average around 0.5ºC higher than typical for the coming three months, with a 'real feel' of 0.6ºC more.
To the west of the mainland, temperatures are expected to average 1ºC higher than normal, according to the State meteorological agency, AEMET – particularly in the provinces of Cáceres and Badajoz (Extremadura), Huelva (Andalucía), León and Zamora (Castilla y León), and Ourense (Galicia).
The first few days of summer 2019 will bring rain and a drop in temperatures in the northern half of the mainland, and see the mercury climb to at least 33ºC in the rest.
As yet, forecasts cannot be accurately made about whether there will be more, or less, rainfall than usual this summer.
AEMET's findings show that summer 2019 will be similar to that of 2018, which was also around 0.6ºC hotter than usual, but not as hot as those of 2015 or 2017 – and certainly not as much as what the agency calls 'the famous summer of '03', when thermometers typically read 1.9ºC more than the average on record since 1981.
This spring, which ends tomorrow, has had one of the warmest endings of late, and has been the sixth-driest this century with 15% less rainfall between March and May.
These data means Spain is officially classified as being in 'meteorological drought', particularly in the eastern half and the northern third and 'some of' the Canary Islands, AEMET says.
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