Spain sweltered in second warmest October in more than 50 years

SPAIN’S national weather agency, AEMET, has released provisional data confirming that the month of October was one of the warmest and driest on record.

It was the second warmest since 1965 and only surpassed by October 2014 which when the average temperature was 0.2 ºC higher.

As for the rainfall, there  has been very little, making it the sixth driest October since 1965.

The average temperature across  Spain was 18.5ºC, which is 2.6ºC higher than the average for this month (reference period: 1981-2010).

The highest temperature anomalies were recorded in the southwestern peninsula with values that exceeded 4ºC in a large part of Extremadura and in areas of central and western Andalucia.

Abnormalities close to 3ºC were seen in large areas of southern Galicia, west and south of Castilla y León, central and western Castilla-La Mancha and points of the Pyrenees.

Meanwhile average rainfall across Spain in October 2017 was just 26 mm, which is only 33% of the average of 78 mm (reference period 1981-2010).

And in just four days days, from October 16 to 20, more than 90% of the total monthly precipitation was recorded.

But the spread was very uneven.

In areas of eastern and southern Castilla y León, central Aragon and southeast of Albacete cumulative rainfall has not exceeded 5mm, while in Grazalema (Cádiz) more than 100 mm fell in one day on October 18.