The year 2017 is already ending and we begin winter this afternoon at 17:28 pm peninsular time. This winter is expected to be warmer than normal throughout Spain and with little rain, after the driest autumn in this century and the third since 1965.
What is the whole winter of 2018 expected to be like?
Warm and dry
The climatological models expect that in the months of January, February and March the temperature values they will be around 1 to 3 degrees above average for the time of year in which we are.
Regarding the rains, the winter is expected to be very dry with rainfall below normal in the months of January and February and March is expected to be the driest month of the entire winter. This lack of precipitation continues the line left by the autumn, which as a whole has been warmer and drier than normal. Just has left 84 liters per square meter of precipitations, that is, 59% less than normal.
The driest month of the whole autumn has been September, while in October and November a little more precipitation has accumulated, although far from being what we need to recover from the drought. The fault that autumn has hardly any rain is an anticyclonic lockdown situation that does not allow the entry of storms in the peninsula nor of storms in the zone of the east.
One of the characteristics that has marked the autumn is that the thermal oscillation that we have had between day and night has been more than 2,4 degrees higher than normal.
Christmas with some rain
Starting on Christmas Eve, several fronts will enter the Atlantic, which will leave rains in the northern half of the peninsula during the first part of the Christmas holidays. Temperatures will be milder than normal and all frost will dissipate.
It is expected that December 24 marks a turning point in the time that helps to make way for a week that is more humid and with somewhat lower temperatures due to cloudiness. The holidays have started with a general atmospheric stability. Little wind, no precipitation or cloudiness. However, the instability will begin on the 25th with several fronts in Galicia and will spread across the Cantabrian slope and the Pyrenees. In the event that these fronts reach the Mediterranean, it will do so on Thursday.
Milder temperatures all winter
The day that will rain the most will be the 27th thanks Because the increase in cloudiness will favor a warmer week than normal, both in the peninsula and in the Balearic Islands and with a lower thermal amplitude, there will also be higher snow levels.
The minimum temperatures will all be above 0 degrees during this week, although as next week arrives they will begin to descend with some weak frosts that are common for this time of year.
The snow level will be between the 1.300 and the 1.400 meters In the first part of the week and as of Wednesday 27 it could drop to 1.000 meters in the mountains of the northwest of the peninsula.
A phenomenon that must be taken care of when traveling around these dates is the presence of fogs. There is a lot of uncertainty in the last days of the year about the formation of fogs, since by the 28th all fronts will have passed and there may be accumulations of more than 20 liters per square meter in western Galicia and Sistema Central.
Extreme care is recommended on the roads due to the fogs that are increasingly likely and persistent as of this Friday, especially in the depressions of Lleida and Huesca.
This is the forecast that awaits us in these weeks and in winter in general for 2018.