Spain faces the end of an episode of extreme heat that has broken the ceiling of the maximum in April.
This Friday, details Cayetano Torres, spokesman for the State Meteorological Agency (Aemet), the worst will be over in the Guadalquivir valley, but temperatures will continue to rise in the eastern half of the peninsula and in the Balearic Islands.
At the last minute, a thermal decrease will begin in the west, which on Saturday will already be "notable and widespread", with up to eight degrees less than these days in practically the entire Peninsula.
On Sunday, it will extend to Levante and "this record episode will be terminated."
Although these two days the temperatures will drop "clearly", they will still be above normal, except in the north of the peninsula, where they will be close to the average.
After a weekend in which storms are expected, they will rise again and the atmosphere will be very warm again from Tuesday, although no longer extraordinary, with up to 35° and 36°.
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Mainland Spain breaks its heat ceiling in April: 38.8 degrees in Córdoba
Thus, this Friday the values are still very high: 36° or more in the southern half of the peninsula, close to 30° in the northern half and up to 35° in the Ebro valley. Again, there is an active yellow warning for heat that affects to Albacete.
"Fortunately, the skies will be cloudy, something that has protected a large part of the peninsular territory, preventing temperatures from being even higher," explains the Aemet spokesman, relieved.
The good news is that rainfall is expected, albeit weak, in the extreme northwest of the peninsula and on the Cantabrian coast.
On Saturday, they will spread to the rest of the northern half and can be intense in the form of showers and storms in the surroundings of the eastern Pyrenees and the Iberian system.
It will reach 34° in the Guadalquivir, 26° in Extremadura, almost 30° in Castilla-La Mancha, 27° in Madrid, above 20° in Castilla y León, and above 30° in the Ebro, Levante and the Andalusian coast.
Between 23° and 25° in Catalonia and 18° on the shores of the Cantabrian Sea.
On Sunday the instability will continue in the northwest and showers and storms are expected in Catalonia and the Balearic Islands.
There will also be storms, although of less intensity in the surroundings of the eastern Iberian system and in the southeastern mountains.
In the rest of the Peninsula there will be cloudiness, which will make temperatures more in line with the time of year, with 27° in Castilla La Mancha, 30° or more in the Guadalquivir, slightly less in Extremadura, above 20 ° in the northern half of the peninsula and the Balearic Islands, and around 18° to 20° on the shores of the Cantabrian Sea.
The first four days of next week will be dry and sunny, warm for the date, but no longer extreme.
Rainfall is only expected on Monday in the extreme northeast and the Balearic Islands, and on Wednesday and Thursday in Galicia and the west of the Cantabrian area.
An “incredibly exceptional and anomalous” episode
Although it is still early to take stock, since it has two days ahead of it, this episode has already broken the limit of the heat that it can get in April.
On Thursday afternoon, 38.8°C was reached in Córdoba, which is the highest temperature ever recorded in April in mainland Spain and the Balearic Islands, exceeding by two tenths the 38.6° reached by Elche in 2011. ―The Canary Islands have an elevation of 40.2°―.
In total, according to the Aemet count, which includes only the main observatories of the network, on Thursday the record for maximums was broken in 25 stations and the record for the highest minimums in four.
On Wednesday there were 17 heat during the day and three at night.
With the nine maximum records on Tuesday, there are 51 maximums and seven minimums and those for the peak this Friday and the rebound in the east on Saturday would still be missing.
➡️As AEMET had foreseen, on Thursday afternoon temperatures exceeded 38ºC in the province of Córdoba, reaching a maximum of 38.8ºC at the airport of the provincial capital (provisional data subject to further validation).🧵 pic.twitter.com /YHQsYRae7z
– AEMET (@AEMET_Esp) April 27, 2023
Roberto Granda, Eltiempo.es meteorologist, broadens the focus to the automatic network and makes a global count of all the stations with the official data that Aemet publishes in Opendata.
According to his calculations, 109 records have been smashed in total from Tuesday to Thursday, of which the bulk, 81, are highs.
Some stations have broken their record two and three times, so only the highest of them counts in the final calculation.
In this sense, Granda highlights the case of Córdoba which, in addition to setting the peninsular record for April, has broken his mark, which was at 34 ° since April 2017, three consecutive days.
"Thursday was already the apotheosis, he did it through the front door, by 4.8° more, and he won the peninsular record for April," underlines this expert.
For Granda, the most remarkable thing about this extreme period is precisely this: "It is no longer just that 109 records have been broken, but that the difference with previous records is something very crazy."
According to statistical logic, he recalls, records “are broken by tenths;
in very rare cases by one degree, but they do it by five... we didn't even see it in the great heat waves last year, which highlights the incredible exceptionality and abnormality of the episode.
Because it has not only happened in Córdoba.
In fact, it is not even the biggest difference: “Two towns in Badajoz surpass it: Don Benito, which broke its record by five degrees, and Herrera del Duque, by 5.1°.
In many other stations, both in Córdoba and Badajoz, the distance was between four and five degrees”.
Another striking fact is that of Cuenca, where the first 30° of April occurred, specifically 31.1°, in a station dating from 1951. Valladolid also suffered its first 30° and Madrid Retiro scored 30.7° , four tenths than its previous maximum level.
In Cáceres, the observatory has changed its location from the center to the suburbs and has knocked down its record "both from the old data series and the new one with 34.4°".
To explain how rare what has happened is, Granda points out that, “by pure statistics, the return period of these unusually high temperatures is 100 or 200 years depending on the different areas.
None of us here should ever see them again in our lifetimes."
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