«From “until May 40 do not take off your coat” to “until August 50 do not put on your coat”». The expression is from Duncan Wingenmeteorologist of the Diario de Mallorca, and, although it may fall short (and the heat will not go away until August 70), the truth is that it comes in handy to understand what the predictive models for the next week: a new rise in temperatures for mid-September.
Uncertainties until the last moment. As we have been repeating these days, if modeling tropical cyclones is complicated, modeling tropical cyclones far from the tropics is much more so. Without going further, in the last hours the models indicate that, after a turn in the Atlantic, the cyclone would move to the east (although transformed into a common storm).
Danielle’s remains. And the truth is that the next few days will depend on the fate of these remains of Hurricane Danielle. Some of the most likely scenarios they speak to us of a huge polar trough that will go into the Atlantic crossing it from north to south. As has happened throughout the summer, if that storm remains far from the coasts of Galicia and Portugal, what we can expect is a boxed-in ridge. That is, heat. Again, heat.
In fact, the valley has to be glued to the west of the peninsula, so that it is not hot in the Valencian Community, the Balearic Islands, Murcia and Catalonia. It is it might happen that movement to the west, eye. In fact, some models they begin to consider it seriously and it would be desirable (because the associated rains would be a much-needed balm) but the temperature rise scenario remains the most likely. A scenario that would also coincide with ECMWF monthly forecasts (which gave between a 90-100% chance of having a warmer than normal September).
The summer of the quince? Many of you may have thought that it is not so rare to associate “summer” and “end of September” in the Iberian Peninsula. In fact, it is typical that at the end of this month or the beginning of the next there is an episode of between two and four days in which the temperatures are higher than in the previous days and that constitutes the last throb of the heat before descending to lower values. much cooler.
It is a very curious phenomenon for which we do not have a plausible scientific explanation, beyond the fact that it occurs at a time of year characterized by great meteorological instability (which opens the door for those short spaces of “good weather”). However, when I talk about a new episode of high temperatures, I am not talking about this. It is rather the result of the heat “stretching” process that we have been seeing in recent years.
A monster determined to catch it all. As Roberto Granda pointed out months ago in elTiempo.es, if we look at the first day of the year that exceeds 30 degrees, we will see that for years that day has only come forward. If in the 1960s, it was normal for 30 degrees to be reached in June, in recent decades that limit is usually reached in May. This 2022, they were reached on May 10, in fact.
The same historical data indicates that the heat is also delaying its march. Here the trend is less solid, but it is also easy to see how the heat that previously disappeared in early October has been delaying its arc until well into the month. Summer does not stop growing.
Image | TropicalTidBits
George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism