How cold?! Spain's record weather revealed

ANYONE who thinks living in Spain means permanent beach weather will be stunned to hear that the mercury dropped to levels typical of a Siberian winter over the last two nights, but it's not fake news: According to the met office, Tuesday night broke historic lowest-temperature records, and then Wednesday night smashed them yet again.

If you've seen this before any of your friends, you might want to take bets on what the numbers were – and you should definitely keep a note of it in case it's ever used as a tie-breaker in a pub quiz.

On Wednesday (January 6) at 05.19 in the morning, the weather station in Clot del Tuc de la Llança (pictured above) in the land-locked Catalunya province of Lleida, just on the edge of the Pyrénées, showed a temperature of -34.1ºC – breaking the record set in 1956, of -32ºC at the weather station of Estany-Gento in the same province.

By 05.30, it had warmed up a bit – the mercury was showing -33.9ºC, although residents probably decided to keep the heating on a little longer just in case.

Before Spain and the rest of the world had closed their mouths after a collective global jaw-dropping and picked themselves up off the floor, the mainland broke its own record yet again, having only just done so for the first time in nearly 65 years.

The weather station in Vega de Liordes in the province of León registered, at 07.06 on Thursday morning, a figure that would even be cold for Arctic Greenland in January: -35.6ºC.

Castilla y León is typically one of Spain's coldest regions in winter, and summers – although warm and pleasant – are far less sweltering than on the southern and Mediterranean coasts; winters in this centre-northern region are frequently very chilly and snow at ground-level is very common towards the end and beginning of the year, although even then, a hard winter might mean night temperatures of -10ºC, which would normally be considered newsworthy.

That said, Vega de Liordes' weather station is at an altitude of 1,872 metres, one of the highest-up in mainland Spain.

And don't let North Pole temperatures put you off visiting Spain in deep winter – cold weather brings snow, which means ski stations can operate in full without having to pump their own crushed ice, and elsewhere in the country, it is rare even in the event of an Arctic front for temperatures to drop below freezing.

The next few days on the Mediterranean will see night temperatures ranging from around 3ºC to 7ºC and day figures between 5ºC and 14ºC, although the 'real feel' is typically lower, so you should dress for about the northern European equivalent of -2ºC to 2ºC in the early hours or 0ºC to 11ºC in the middle of the day.

Spain is currently on the battering end of 'storm Filomena', although 'storm' conditions are not predicted everywhere; mostly, she is expected to bring snow and exceptional cold.

Snow in inland areas at altitudes below about 1,000 metres is usually little more than a dusting which lasts a maximum of about a day, and in coastal areas, rarer than a nine-legged spider – which meant that in January 2017, footage of snow-covered beaches in Dénia and Jávea (Alicante province) made international headlines, and Facebook was aflame with residents posting photos of snowmen against a backdrop of the sea, and lemon and palm trees with a thick coating of white.

Record weather in Spain

Spain being a country with a vast assortment of weather, expats often report that over the years they become more tolerant to very cold as well as very hot environments – and, in fact, a typical summer on the Mediterranean, islands and south coast regularly sees thermometer figures the same as those of the last two nights in León and Lleida but without the minuses before them. 

And during the famous 'Siberian front' of February 2012, when electricity use soared to levels not seen in decades, residents joked that they would return the favour by sending Siberia a 'Spanish front' during the nation's next record heatwave.

So, what would be a record heatwave? Not a great deal higher, in real terms, than an averagely-hot summer. The 'official' top figure since records began 101 years ago is 46.9ºC, registered at the airport in Córdoba, in inland Andalucía, on July 13, 2017.

Córdoba, along with Jaén and Sevilla, are three of Spain's hottest cities in summer, but the 'record' reading is not considered to be the highest de facto temperature in the country: On the same day, a thermometer in the town of Montoro, close to Córdoba, registered exactly 47.3ºC, although it is not part of the 'main' weather-station network; and on July 4, 1994, a thermometer in Murcia, on the south-east coast, reached 47.2ºC, but was part of the 'secondary' meteorological station system and so could not be counted.

It should be pointed out here that thermometers are placed in and temperatures taken in the shade; the difference between this and direct sunlight can range from 5ºC to 10ºC, meaning that anyone in Murcia on July 4, 1994 or in Montoro on July 13, 2017 who stepped out into full sun could have been hit by an oven-like air-wall of up to 57.2ºC or 57.3ºC.

The pictured thermometer is in the centre of Sevilla and was taken in early September 2016, although it is not valid for 'official' figures as it is placed in direct sunlight in a very exposed location.

Why don't these higher figures count?

Head technician of Spain's State meteorological agency, AEMET, Rubén del Campo, says that although weather data have been recorded in the country since 1920, much of the information collated in the earlier decades is 'not valid' because it is not possible to ascertain which tools, methods or conditions were involved in taking measurements.

Observatories, or weather stations, with standardised instruments and equipment, set up according to specific procedures and in locations where no extraneous or confounding variables can influence results, are considered the only 'guaranteed' source of temperature, rainfall, wind speed or snowfall information, Rubén del Campo explains.

“The best thermometer in the world will be unreliable if it is set up, say, close to the tarmac [especially as this is black and traps heat], where it would have spent the whole day absorbing heat from the sun,” he says.

“AEMET has a very dense network of weather information equipment, but not all of it is used for official purposes; some of it is just backup.

“For extremes, or records, we only take data from the weather stations in the main network, as we know these are 100% reliable.”

All this means, therefore, that when the met office talks about the hottest, coldest, wettest or driest day, month, year or season 'in history', they will generally be referring back to only around the mid-1950s.

Previous 'cold records'

Along with the 1956 temperature of -32ºC in the province of Lleida, earlier 'unprecedented' lows which have now been surpassed include that of Calamocha, Teruel province on December 17, 1963, when the mercury plunged to -30ºC – at the time, the coldest December temperature ever recorded, and certainly chillier than local residents could ever remember, even in a province where winters at high altitudes regularly come in at -7ºC and, although not 'normal', -12ºC or thereabouts is not exactly headline-grabbing.

Calamocha, which sits at 930 metres above sea level, along with Teruel city and the town of Molina de Aragón in the province of Guadalajara, Castilla-La Mancha, to the north-east of Madrid, have long been dubbed Spain's 'ice triangle': Scientist Vicente Aupí first coined the expression in light of the December 17, 1963 record, a day on which Molina de Aragón registered figures of -28ºC; Teruel city's record low dates back to 1952, when the mercury plummeted to -28.2ºC on January 28.

Rubén del Campo explains why these front-page-hitting cold snaps happen, and how you can tell if there's about to be one where you are.

“What normally happens is that, in the days leading up to it, it snows, and the snow remains on the ground; then a mass of cold air enters, normally from continental Europe, and 'sits' on top of the snow that's still there.”

The combination of the two means the air gets even colder due to contact with snow.

“At the same time, you'll get clear, cloudless skies, and the nights will then bring a brutally-cold drop in temperatures,” Del Campo says.

Nice weather for ducks

Rain is forecast this week on the Mediterranean, a part of the country where wet weather is not frequent but, when it happens, it really means business: Autumn often brings a spell of a few days of near-monsoon-like conditions with flash floods, followed by weeks and weeks of clear skies and mild temperatures, a phenomenon known as a gota fría (literally, 'cold drop').

At these times, it is not unheard of for rainfall to reach 40 litres per square metre within an hour (about four centimetres, or just under two inches), although record-breaking downpours have registered over 20 times that amount.

For anyone living in the southern tip of the province of Valencia, November 3, 1987 was – and thankfully, still is – the greatest washout in history: Every year on the anniversary, black-and-white photo footage of 'the great flood' appears in the newspapers and documentaries on the TV. 

The southernmost town in the province, Oliva, was hit by a whopping 817 litres of rain in 24 hours (81.7 centimetres, or 32.17 inches – over 2'8” of water), and residents on news broadcasts still show reporters the pen-marks they drew on their inside walls to show how high the floods reached. In the district capital eight kilometres away, Gandia, rainfall registered came to 720 litres per square metre in 24 hours (72 centimetres, or 28.35 inches – 2'4” in total), and the river in the next-door village of Beniopa burst its banks, filling the streets with so much muddy water that entire front doors were submerged and school children had to form a human chain to swim home against the current, whilst adults hanging out of upstairs windows hauled them to safety. The Armed Forces moved in, bringing emergency bread and water, and each and every resident had to queue up for their own roll and bottle – even children, the elderly and disabled – to stop people from stockpiling.

“My mother was upstairs, praying to every saint she could name,” says Cristina, from Beniopa, who was 10 years old at the time.

To gain an idea of how extreme the downpour was, the total average annual rainfall for Spain is about 650 litres per square metre (65 centimetres, or 25.6 inches – around 2'1”); all this, plus nearly another third, landed on the east-coast district of La Safor in one day.

Luckily, this really is unprecedented: The national historic record that comes closest to it is a 'mere' 337 litres per square metre in 24 hours (33.7 centimetres, or 13.27 inches – just over 1'1”) in Izaña, Tenerife on March 17, 1993, followed by San Javier, Murcia on the very day after the Oliva-Gandia flood, at 330 litres per square metre in 24 hours (33 centimetres, being 13 inches or 1'1”).

“What we used to call a gota fría is now called a DANA – the acronym for 'Isolated Depression at High Levels' – and is a pocket of cold air hovering in the upper levels of the Earth's atmosphere,” Rubén del Campo reveals.

“It destabilises the atmosphere greatly in autumn, when sea and river waters are still very warm and the very sharp contrast creates turbulence in the air.

“It is joined by sea winds – very damp, humid Mediterranean air – which clashes with the mountains a short distance back from the coast.”

Figures that will blow you away

One of AEMET's highest-up and most-exposed weather stations is in Izaña, Tenerife, standing on a mountainside at 2,390 metres above sea level, meaning it comes as little surprise to hear that the strongest winds on record in Spain were registered here.

Gusts more than doubled the national motorway speed limit, reaching 248 kilometres per hour (154.1mph) on November 28, 2005 – 'a tremendous figure', Del Campo says, unnecessarily.

“That was the day when the 'Delta', a tropical storm, swept across the Canary Islands,” he explains. 

“In this high-altitude mountain area, there were some really violent winds, practically a hurricane, although technically it falls into the category of 'tropical storm'.”

The Canary Islands are in the sub-tropics, not the tropics – which start around southern Morocco – and, although most of mainland Spain is above the sub-tropics and in the 'temperate zone', as the area between these and the Arctic is known, the weather characteristics in the entire country are classified as those of a 'sub-tropical climate'.

During Storm Delta, “ports, airports, roads and schools had to be closed; boats crashed into each other and sank; crops and buildings suffered extensive damage, and there were serious problems with the phone lines, electricity and water supply,” according to Del Campo.

AEMET has data on other record-breaking weather phenomena – days of fog, of sun, of rainfall; numbers of lightning strikes all at once or in one day or night, and even wave height, thanks to 'smart' buoys out at sea.

January 6, 2014 brought the highest-recorded wave off Spain's shores – a monstrous 27.81 metres (91'3”) in Cape Vilán in the seaside town of Camariñas (A Coruña province, Galicia).

But don't let record heat and cold put you off travelling to Spain. The parts of the country that have reported the lowest-ever temperatures are known for their exceptionally chilly winters, meaning homes are built with central heating as standard.

Winters are milder on the islands, the south and the Mediterranean, meaning homes are not normally geared up for the cold and central heating is extremely rare – but property specialists say fitting it is not worth the investment or disruption, given that it would typically only be used for a short few weeks of the year and overnight. Here, a better and more economical option is to fit a wall-mounted unit that serves as heating and air conditioning combined – and you'll get more use out of it in summer.

These can involve some financial effort to install, but are becoming increasingly sophisticated and energy-efficient, so may well be far cheaper to run than central heating.