Spain’s mountainous interior is very familiar with snow and freezing temperatures during the winter months. However, this past week has been quite exceptional thanks to the coming together of powerful Storm Filomena and arctic air.
For the 2,188ft capital of Madrid, as much as 20 inches of snow fell bringing the city to it’s knees and presenting the city’s greatest snowfall in over 50 years.
Here’s the latest Europe snow depth according to the GFS.
Credit: wxcharts.com
Out went Storm Filomena and in came record cold and subfreezing temps which almost covered ALL of Spain except for the coast.
As you can see from the below chart, the east interior resembled a night in Russia rather than Spain as several high elevation stations fell well below -20C.
Credit: Meteoceil
The AEMET automated site at Bello recorded a low of -25.4C.
However, the manual AEMET site of Torremocha del Jiloca (elev 3,219ft) registered an even colder -26.5C, considered a record in it’s 35 years of service one one of Spain’s coldest ever temperatures.
Credit: Vicente Aupí
@VicenteAupi
3,474ft Molina de Aragon plunged to -25.2C. According to some sources, this site is regarded as Spain’s ‘official’ record holder for cold when it recorded a minimum of -28.2C in January 1952. However, others state the settlement of Calamocha is with -30.0C recorded in December 1963.
Madrid’s Cuatro Vientos site fell to -13.0C, the lowest since 1963.
Here is AEMET observer Mónica Valverde Blanco seen taking the Molina de Aragon reading this morning.
Credit: Miguel Angel
@Fotolanga
Private weather stations recorded temperatures as low as -29.9C.
Sites recorded all-time record low maximums as well as minimums.
Credit: AEMET
The last time Spain recorded a minimum of -25C or colder was 2001.
Thanks to Climate Historian Maximiliano Herrera for some of the interesting stats in this article.
FEATURED IMAGE CREDIT: RAÚL SANCHIDRIÁN / EFE
Recent Comments