The State Meteorological Agency (Aemet) said today, Thursday, in its quarterly forecast for the summer months that June, July and August will see “above-average temperatures” across the country, most notably in the north and east of the mainland and, above all, in the Balearics.
At a press conference held at the agency’s headquarters in Madrid to present a new forest fire risk index, Francisco Javier Rodríguez Marcos, head of the Aemet’s Meteorological Production Department, gave an overview of the weather forecast for the coming weeks and summer months, which are set to be marked by heat.
The expert began by reviewing the current month, May, the first two weeks of which, according to the agency’s data, recorded “cooler-than-usual temperatures”. However, from the 18th to the 20th, temperatures began to rise gradually, “and the rest of the month has been exceptionally warm”.
Based on the latest data from the Aemet, the expert commented that ‘it seems quite likely that there will be a gradual drop in temperatures across the entire mainland from next Tuesday onwards; but as we are starting from very high values, this will result in a warm anomaly for next week’, which will be ‘slightly less intense’ than this week’s.
During the second week of next month – from 8 to 14 June – ‘this warm anomaly will persist, more pronounced in the interior of the mainland, but still slightly less so than in the first week of June’, and something similar will occur in the third week of June.
On the other hand, ‘heavy rainfall is not expected, except for that associated with fronts that will brush the north of the peninsula and which will not be very heavy’ for next week, and he has pointed to some storms and showers in the second week, whilst ‘the level of confidence in the forecast is lower’ for the third week of the month.
He also noted, with regard to the average for the summer quarter – June, July and August – that ‘it is most likely that temperatures will be above normal’ across the country, and more markedly so in the north and east of the mainland, and particularly in the Balearics.
In a review of the weather over recent months, this expert noted that the winter – December, January and February – was very warm this year in mainland Spain and the Balearics, being “the ninth warmest on record since 1961 and a very wet winter, the eighth wettest since 1961 and the third wettest of the current century”.
He highlighted that in March the temperature ‘was normal, but with a significant difference between the western part of the mainland, where it was warm, in contrast to the eastern part and the Balearic and Canary Islands. Regarding April, he said that the month stood out above all because ’it was extremely warm, the warmest in the entire series”. As for rainfall, it was very dry, except in the Canary Islands.