Starting on Thursday, June 11, an anticyclone will channel a mass of very warm air up from North Africa. The temperatures will rise, yes, but that is only part of the story.
The other part is the sun: an almost solstice-like solar radiation that will heat that already hot air mass even more. We will notice it across the country, but Galicia is likely to take the brunt.
According to some meteorologists, the entire region could find itself between 30 and 40 degrees this Saturday. And, curiously, that isn’t the most striking aspect.
The second episode of extraordinary heat in three weeks. The most striking thing is the event’s position in the calendar and its recurrence. After all, it arrives after the warmest May ever recorded in the community and days after Health authorities had to raise the heat-risk threshold by one degree in Ourense. Galicia is warming up.
But it isn’t just a matter of coincidence. It’s something more structural. The thermal calendar has been shifting for some time, and we have reached a point where the Atlantic façade has ceased to be a climate refuge very quickly.
And that makes the problem more serious. I was referring earlier to the health-risk thresholds. For the Ministry, which has just updated them, that line stands at 26 degrees in A Coruña. A temperature that would be pleasant down south.
What will happen in the coming days? A classic summer combination, explained by Juan Taboada, coordinator of MeteoGalicia: a very warm air mass stalled by the position of a high-pressure system, stability, clear skies, and brutal sunshine. In the words of AEMET, “summer temperatures… starting on Thursday.”
Nevertheless, the most intense spell will be between Friday and Saturday. In fact, even with storms in Ourense, 35 degrees are expected without a problem.
The ‘other’ problem. Because, in coastal zones, the problem isn’t only the air mass, the sun, and the stability. The other problem is that all the Galicia and Cantabrian buoys have recorded historic highs (with anomalies between 1.5 and 2 degrees above the average).
That is what is going to prevent the sea from cushioning the temperatures.
Image | BenBaso
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