Central Spain records temperatures of -25°C after snowstorm

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-55632791

by zeristor • 6 years ago

182 128 6 years ago

bbc.co.uk

cal5k2• 6 years ago

Cold-blooded Canadian here, so forgive me for asking - is this highly unusual?

inglor_cz• 6 years ago

Spain is kinda prelude to Africa, at least climate-wise. It gets cold and snowy in the mountains during winter, but something like that is highly unusual in Madrid.

skrebbel• 6 years ago

Madrid is generally considered one of the hottest places of Europe.

otoburb• 6 years ago

... and we wonder why so many Canadians move down south to California or Florida. Even cold-blooded reptiles like basking in the sun once in a while.

RspecMAuthortah• 6 years ago

Yeah I am one of those cold blooded Canadians. Weird thing is if you look at what's going in Canadian real estate, the shitty weather is not reflected in price at all.

Weather and the high cost of living in all the major Canadian cities (compared to the average tech income) were the two main reasons wife and I decided to move down South. Don't regret it for a moment.

cmrdporcupine• 6 years ago

It's no colder in most of Canada (the most populated parts) than most of the midwest or the northeast. Average temperatures in the winter in Toronto are only slightly colder than NYC.

Yes, where I'm originally from in central Alberta, it gets cold as hell. But most of the population of Ontario (the most populous province) lives significantly south of the 49th parallel, on the same latitude as much of Oregon. Further south than Vermont, Maine, or New Hampshire, and due to weather patterns this side of the lake is actually a tad warmer on average than the south side in central NY.

TDLR: Most of Canada isn't as cold as the stereotypes. Lots of Americans live in colder areas.

antiman02• 6 years ago

Spain almost never sees degrees below 0°C [1].

[1] https://www.climatestotravel.com/climate/spain

marvel_boy• 6 years ago

Not true. In the north range mountains there are below zero temperatures every winter.

madia_leva• 6 years ago

Spain has very different climates. I live only 30 kms away from the cost in the North of Spain and temperatures of -4 or -5 C are quite common in the winter. Some times we even have -10 C. So temperetures bellow zero are definitely common here.

Xenoamorphous• 6 years ago

In the north it’s completely normal to have sub zero temperatures in the winter. My hometown doesn’t have a particularly high altitude (650m, i.e. not in the mountains) and the average low for January is below zero.

CodeGlitch• 6 years ago

Seems pretty unusual. Compared to the UK [1] which is much further North.

[1] https://blog.metoffice.gov.uk/2012/10/16/top-ten-coldest-rec...

cogman10• 6 years ago

Interestingly, even the UK doesn't get a lot of snow. That's because the gulf stream keeps it relatively warm for it's latitude.

One of the major concerns of climate change is that may disrupt the gulf stream which would be disastrous for the UK. Their ecosystem depends heavily on the fact that water from the gulf of mexico keeps them unusually warm.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_Stream

alpaca128• 6 years ago

From the article:

Spain's coldest night for at least 20 years

soyyo• 6 years ago

In Madrid city it may snow one or two times a year, but not all years, also most of the time the snow goes away the same day it falls. A few years the snow remains in the city for a couple of days, but is not that common and is usually seen as a joyful event.

But this time, the whole city was completely covered in snow, all of it. Cars abandoned in the middle of the street, people skying in the main avenues, it was crazy, no one I know has ever seen this here so if it has ever happened, it must been at least 80 years ago.

darthcoder4242• 6 years ago

I am from Madrid, and I can tell this is in fact highly unusual. From time to time it might snow in Madrid a couple of days, but nothing like this. In the mountains of course it happen almost every year, but not in the plains...

All the cities in central Spain are collapsed by the ice and snow (including the capital), there are no public transportation, emergencies services can barely make it into affected zones, a lot of people don't have water supply because of frozen pipes (including myself), trucks with food and supplies are still stuck and cannot enter in the city...

This chaos is of course because we are not prepared for this extreme cold weather, and we are not prepared because this is VERY unusual.

Let's say this is the same unusual as in the covid-19 pandemic,nobody would have imagined it a year ago.

cal5k2• 6 years ago

Ah. Well, that makes sense. When it gets down to -25 here (thankfully not all that often in Southern Alberta) I just don't spend much time outside... although -25C still isn't cold enough to necessitate plugging in the truck. It gets truly, bitterly cold in places like Saskatoon, Edmonton or Winnipeg... -40 is not altogether uncommon.

My house of made of Insulated Concrete Forms and has an amazing r value. A hot fire in the wood stove can quickly heat the whole place up to 22C, even when it's -20 outside.

It can snow 50cm over a 12hr period, though, and that's always fun to deal with. I've gotten badly stuck in my own driveway twice this year (it's 40 feet long & annoying to clear), and both times the snowblower conked out and I had to take the thing apart and fix it before I was able to go into town to get groceries. Clearing the driveway with a shovel is simply not possible unless you plan to spend an entire day doing it.

Anyhoo, all this to say is - dealing with that kind of weather requires some preparation, and I can see how it would cause mayhem in a place where that's unusual. Hopefully when air travel becomes abundant again I can travel to Spain to enjoy its warmth :-P

u678u• 6 years ago

The Spanish people definitely dont have Canada quality heating or insulation.

Compared to most of the world Canada is pretty much like living in the arctic. :) Even Americans dont want to live in the top half of the USA any more.

ficklepickle• 6 years ago

Lot's of Canada doesn't have "Canada quality" insulation, including my apartment but also a variety of houses I have lived in.

I grew up in the Okanagan, where temps range from -20°C to 40°C. Many houses there couldn't deal with either extreme well.

Even in Vancouver, -16 would freeze some pipes and kill some people. Not as bad as Madrid, but we are more accustomed to it here.

dieortin2• 6 years ago

I don’t think heating quality or insulation is a problem for most people in central Spain.

Jare• 6 years ago

I remember back in 1984 or so, we once had snow in Madrid in May. Younger people laugh at me as if I'm just making that up, but what has just happened is way more unusual.

logc• 6 years ago

I remember that snowstorm, although very distantly! It must have been '84 or '85 ...

tpmx7• 6 years ago

In the mountains, at about 3k feet or 1k meters elevation. Yes, the headline is quite misleading. I expect more from the BBC.

From the article:

The temperature plunged to -25C (-13F) in Molina de Aragón and Teruel, in mountains east of Madrid

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molina_de_Arag%C3%B3n

Elevation 1,065 m (3,494 ft)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teruel

Elevation 915 m (3,002 ft)

dan1234• 6 years ago

Even in Madrid it got down to -16C (average low for January is 2.7C).

88840-8855• 6 years ago

THIS.

Plus, it is not that unusual. It happened 18 years ago already.

nend• 6 years ago

That doesn't seem very misleading. The estimated temperature difference for every 1000 meters in additional elevation is only 5-6C.

cs7022• 6 years ago

Mentioning elevation without any context or reference to historical temperatures is not very helpful. Consider updating your comment.

mytailorisrich2• 6 years ago

The Wikipedia page for Molina de Aragón, which you linked to, says that the average low in January for that locality is -3.5C, and that the record low is -28C, which happens to also be the record low ever recorded in the whole of Spain (still according to the Wikipedia page).

-25C is thus certainly newsworthy and, well, that's in central Spain, which is elevated, but "central Spain" does not imply that it isn't and Spanish geography is what it is. This is not misleading.

tomalpha3• 6 years ago

The headline doesn’t come across as misleading to me. I interpreted it as the temperature having been recorded somewhere in central Spain which appears to be accurate (granted my Spanish geography isn’t great). The tone also appears to be consistent with what else is being reported - that this is unusual or possibly even extreme weather.

I’m assuming your expectation was different. If so I’d be be curious as to how you did interpret it?

tpmx7• 6 years ago

Knowing the topography of Spain helps.

My interpretation is that the very, very woke BBC staff picked what seems like extreme temps from a mountain region and then technically correctly wrote that "Central Spain" "records temperatures of -25C". That is all.

Do note: I'm not a climate change denier. I just hate crap like this, with a passion. I don't think we should have to abandon facts in this particular fight.

It seems like a bunch of people here think we should. That's very scary and destructive, IMO.

_Microft2• 6 years ago

Central Spain contains a large plateau at an elevation of ~500-1000m above sea level.

Checking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meseta_Central , I was almost correct. With an area of 200000 km^2 (from german Wikipedia) it is even larger than I expected.

Ma8ee2• 6 years ago

The elevation of Madrid is 667 meters according to Wikipedia. So we are not talking about the temperature of an isolated mountain top, even if they report the most extreme temperature.

xeromal• 6 years ago

Yeah, how its written is like it's -25 at massive population centers. Intentional vague.

antiman02• 6 years ago

A few days ago, someone posted a blog post here on HN [1] explaining the phenomenon which causes this: https://www.severe-weather.eu/global-weather/polar-vortex-co...

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25713704

guidedlight• 6 years ago

We are also entering a solar minimum, the last one was linked to a “little ice age” in Europe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maunder_Minimum

I don’t know how climate change will affect this. But we might be in for an interesting few years.

throwawyeverytm• 6 years ago

The Maunder Minimum occurred with a much longer period of lower-than-average European temperatures which is likely to have been primarily caused by volcanic activity.[citation needed]

CraigJPerry2• 6 years ago

No we just left a minimum, there’s been sunspots of opposite polarity appearing since early 2019 if memory serves - round about that timeframe anyway but the end of the minimum wasn’t confirmed until earlier in 2020.

It wasn’t a Maunder Minimum.

For the next 4 years or so we’ll proceed to maximum then back down to the next minimum thereafter.

guerrilla• 6 years ago

As I recall, many comments there were very dismissive. I wonder if that senrinent will change.

tgv4• 6 years ago

I don't think the two are related. At least, I haven't heard anyone mention it as the cause.

cs7022• 6 years ago

For those accustomed to US/Imperial units, -25×9÷5+32=-13°F. Temperatures in Madrid dropped to -16°C (3°F).

As others here have mentioned, these temperatures are unusually low for January in this region of Spain. They are the kinds of temperatures one would have seen in January during the "Little Ice Age" between the 15th and 19th centuries.[a][b][c]

Let's hope this unusual drop in temperature is just a "one-off" rare climate event, and not a portend of things to come.

[a] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age

[b] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/04/01/how-the-little...

[c] http://www.iberianature.com/material/iceage.html

evgen• 6 years ago

I believe that this is due to the recent collapse of this year's polar vortex. The same thing happened last year and pushed large amounts of cold polar air into Europe. We are expecting a few more waves of this over the next few weeks.

PeterisP• 6 years ago

It absolutely is an example of things to come - scenarios like this are caused by the weakened polar vortex that generally separates European weather from Arctic weather; the polar vortex has become weaker over the last years because of recent climate change / regional warming, and it is strongly expected to become even weaker in the coming decade(s), making weather like this more frequent.

waheoo• 6 years ago

Is this related to the polar vortex collapse discussed just the other day, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25713704

nextos• 6 years ago

It looks unusual, and I agree with you that it might be an example of the things to come. But I'd love to see an analysis of snowstorms in central Spain using extreme value theory. It might not be that infrequent. In EVT terms, the return level might not be more than a few decades.

Central Spain is quite cold. For example, when the International Brigades came to fight in the Civil War they were expecting a mild Winter, but they were shocked by pretty extreme temperatures. Luckily, everyone got prepared as next few years were even worse. In 1937, Teruel Battle was consistently fought below -20 C.

Aside from 1937, 1956 and 1971 saw pretty intense snowstorms. The 1971 one was much worse than the current storm according to the data I've seen.

baxtr• 6 years ago

Wasn’t this kinda expected? It’s an El Niño year I believe? Australian summer is also colder than usual I think.

EDIT: Seems like it’s a “La niña” Winter...

ben_w• 6 years ago

The average minimum in Madrid in January is +3°C, and -3°C in Molina de Aragón, so no.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Madrid

https://www.weather-atlas.com/en/spain/molina-de-aragon-clim...

knowhy• 6 years ago

According to Wikipedia [0] that should not affect Europe.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Ni%C3%B1a#/media/File:La_Ni...

King-Aaron• 6 years ago

41 degrees in Perth the other day, it seems pretty on par on this side of the island

nojokes• 6 years ago

In principle snow is good. It is better than rain as it will not flow quickly away. Melting snow lets more water to sink into ground and build up water table.

throw0101a2• 6 years ago

As someone who lives in Canada: you don't have to shovel rain.

oh_sigh• 6 years ago

Wouldn't a little ice age be great right about now? Then we can burn all the oil we want and be helping stay within our temperature bounds, not blowing through them.

Shared404• 6 years ago

Not an expert by any means, but...

The issue is that this is caused by the collapse of standard weather systems.

This isn't a sign of an ice age, it's the sign of instability.

yk• 6 years ago

So "Day after tomorrow" is the SF film that came true?

tpmx7• 6 years ago

No. It sometimes gets very cold in the mountains.

duxup• 6 years ago

This woman in Madrid was doing her best to deal with the icy conditions on Monday

No... not hot water to melt the ice and then have it freeze again.

Jtsummers2• 6 years ago

It was comical, but also sad, seeing people doing that in middle Georgia (US state, not country) a few years back when we had an unusual (for the area) cold spell with a lot of ice. Very few had scrapers and brushes for their cars to clear them so I was cleaning a lot of neighbors' cars while my own car was warming up.

mschuster912• 6 years ago

Isn't pouring boiling hot water on car glass a pretty certain way to shatter them by thermal stress?!

maaaaattttt3• 6 years ago

To put this in context as well, most places (at the least in the southern parts of Spain) don't have central heating systems or proper insulation. A fireplace or reversible A/C if you're lucky.

dieortin2• 6 years ago

In the central parts of Spain they do have heating systems and proper insulation. Winters are cold there, just not as cold as this year.

saool• 6 years ago

I wouldn't extrapolate.

Most places in Spain have and need heating, apart from a few coastal enclaves in the south. Spain is the 5th largest user of energy for residential heating in the EU, behind Germany, France, Italy, and Poland.

maaaaattttt3• 6 years ago

I agree this is rather limited to the south coast and the islands. But I would argue that high energy consumption could, in this case, very well be the sign of poor insulation and inefficient heating installations (A/C).

imnotlost• 6 years ago

Snow in Madrid is definitely unusual but Spain gets snow every year.

"You can go to Puerto de Navacerrada for a few hours of skiing then return to Madrid to continue visiting the many attractions in Europe’s fourth-largest city."

https://www.justapack.com/best-ski-resorts-in-spain-ski-reso...

harperlee• 6 years ago

It used to be more frequent. When I was in school, there was at least a day per winter when snow would not melt and you woke up to whit(ish) streets in Madrid (city). Nothing that jammed traffic or made us skip school by far, but you got some snow to throw around. Currently that does not happen; and when it happens it seems heavier. Last traffic-disrupting snowfall was 2009 in Madrid.

In Madrid (region), at less than an hour driving, we have a Sierra where we used to have 3 skiing stations. Now we only have 2 (Navacerrada and Valdesquí) because Cotos had to close. And snow melts more quickly. My father always boasts that he once skied in the Madrid Sierra on May 15th, and with current climate that's difficult to believe. But I've seen how the skiing season gets shorter year after year. 15 years ago everybody made plans for going skiing to the Pyrenees on the Inmaculada holiday (early November), and currently all bets are off even for the Constitution holiday (early December).

tgv4• 6 years ago

But that's over a kilometer higher.

raarts• 6 years ago

For those interested in events like this. There's a guy[1] that collects reports on cold weather records and maintains a mailing list.

He's a wonky guy and kinda bent on the solar minimum but if you can see past that, his list does a good job of reporting on cold extremes across the world.

[1] electroverse.net

mactitan• 6 years ago

Well he’s saying Site is being demonetized. It’s posting this interesting comment in the articles(that seems to contradict some of the posts on this thread):

Both NOAA and NASA appear to agree, if you read between the lines, with NOAA saying we’re entering a ‘full-blown’ Grand Solar Minimum in the late-2020s, and NASA seeing this upcoming solar cycle (25) as “the weakest of the past 200 years”, with the agency correlating previous solar shutdowns to prolonged periods of global cooling here.

dukeofdoom• 6 years ago

This is killing temperature even for the hardiest palm. So I'm wondering how much of their mature trees and landscaping will be destroyed

torben-friis• 6 years ago

The city of Madrid, where I live, is currently full of fallen trees. I went for a walk a couple days ago and could count easily 10-20 just in the nearby streets.

It's been pretty chaotic, since we're not used to snow at all. After 4 days roads are still unusable, supermarkets can't restock shelves...The city's pretty much stopped.

mytailorisrich2• 6 years ago

-16C, as has been recorded in Madrid, is definitely lethal for olive trees.

I don't know about the temperatures in the all of Spain or where the main olive orchards are but that has the potential for being devastating for growers.

melenaboija• 6 years ago

Also last week "Spain records lowest temperature ever at -34C (-29F)" [1]. This is in the Pyrenees where is not unusual to reach low temperatures, but still freaking cold.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/spain-weather-snow/spain-rec...

spapas82• 6 years ago

Wow that's really strange because here in Greece we have probably the hottest January of the last years with temperatures around 20c!

_Microft2• 6 years ago

It’s not that surprising. While climate change is often discussed in terms of increasing average temperature, the change will come with much larger variations than we are currently experiencing. A lot of these extremes will ‚average out‘ but that won’t make hot summers or cold winters less unpleasant (or deadly).

mobilio• 6 years ago

In Bulgaria too.

But this weekend temperatures are going to drop to -10 to -15.

renedet• 6 years ago

Where's the global warming(lie)?

jwcacces• 6 years ago

This is global warming. The globe as a whole gets warmer, and the weather gets more erratic.

See: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/01/clima...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2019/01/30/this...

https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2020/12/if-global-warming...

or anything else you get when you search "global warming colder winters"

tgv4• 6 years ago

It's been called (anthropogenic) climate change because of insipid replies like yours. It's like my daughter saying that's she having social interaction because she's looking at tiktok, "and it's called social media."

imtringued2• 6 years ago

The name is based on an early paper from the 50s [0]. Global warming is an Algore rebranding that got lots of public awareness. Once the science took over it was back to climate change again. But yeah you are right. A lot of people just attack the used language and then shout "deception" when people are just talking colloquially because explaining everything from scratch gets very tiring eventually.

The problem with climate change deniers is that they refuse everything so you have to actually explain everything from scratch time and time again. That's part of the strategy. Look for tiny mistakes and then deny the whole thing.

Clarifying that one is talking about anthropogenic climate change instead of just "regular" climate change is a pretty good example. Ultimately the difference is meaningless because non anthropogenic climate change is insignificant on human time scales. Give me 500 years to prepare and I won't care. Give me 50 years and I will always fail.

The worst part is that I don't even see any long term benefits to denying climate change. Even if it was completely fictional I still don't see any reason to not adopt technologies that would ultimately reduce the impact of climate change. Coal is a dying industry because of the economics. Oil is too precious to burn in cars (planes and ships are good use cases though). There is a general lack of investments to put central bank money into.

Oh, did I just say "climate change denier"? I obviously mean "climate change skeptics". (I am awaiting a response that skeptic is also wrong)

[0] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.2153-3490....

kube-system• 6 years ago

weather =/= climate

Climate is more or less the average weather over time. Think about it this way:

Let's pretend (and for the sake of simplifying the problem), we have a tiny planet with only two equally sized places, A and B. And here's the (year 1) seasonal temperatures for each: (winter/spring/summer/autumn)

A: 10, 20, 30, 20

B: 15, 25, 35, 25

The global average temperature (if you average all the numbers) is: 22.5

Now, let's say in year 2, the numbers change to this:

A: 8, 22, 30, 20

B: 12, 28, 35, 27

Now the global average temperature has increased by a 0.25 degree to 22.75. But all of these things are also true:

1. A didn't get any warmer during the summer in year 2 than it did in year 1.

2. Both places got colder during the winter.

3. B only got 2 degrees warmer than last year.

4. The largest temperature fluctuation is 60% more extreme in year 1 than in year 2.

Now, expand this example to the thousands of places that we measure weather on earth and you can see why the weather in one location would contribute statistically very little to the overall climate.

hackeraccount• 6 years ago

It's very simple. Weather will just get worse unless you do X.

X is just whatever I want.

pengaru• 6 years ago

It's predicted that Europe will get colder due to climate change. "Europe will get cold toes" - NASA [0]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DldSBIja2Kw&t=46s

qayxc2• 6 years ago

Only Spain isn't Europe - meanwhile 12° further north, temperatures are normal (even a bit on the warmer side) for the season.

A single night of record breaking low temperatures doesn't mean much. 24 years ago today, it was -18°C in my little corner of the world, the next night it was more than 12°C warmer already.

Freak weather extremes will increase in both intensity and frequency, but doomsday predictions usually don't hold much water as we know too little about the system as a whole and the feedback mechanisms involved.

jansan2• 6 years ago

Freak weather extremes will increase in both intensity and frequency,

Is there really data to back this up?

peshooo• 6 years ago

Well, only the west coast of Europe. And only if the Gulf Stream stops.

arcturus172• 6 years ago

Madrid continues to be in utter disarray after this weekend's snowstorm, with most streets still covered in ice, many hardly penetrable even by foot. Supplies in some downtown supermarkets are low, with fresh produce completely out-of-stock.

The fact that snowplows are nowhere to be seen and streets continue to be in such a poor state suggests to me that not only we are completely ill-equipped for this situation (which is normal), but that the situation is overwhelming and the few resources we do have are spread thinly across the country.

throwaway57522• 6 years ago

This is completely abnormal weather for Madrid. It would be objectively stupid for them to have prepared well for arctic weather, given the average temperature in January is not even below 0 C and they get on average almost no snowfall in an average year.

arcturus172• 6 years ago

That’s what I meant when I said it’s normal that we are ill-prepared for this situation.

loosetypes• 6 years ago

These same areas have also seen increasingly warmer summers in recent times, right?

While it may be hard to speculate short and long term regional changes, does anyone have a recommendations for interactive tools to explore, say, monthly temperatures for a given area for the past however many years?

m12k• 6 years ago

It's worth reiterating that the problem is climate change, not just global warming. There's more energy in the atmosphere, and that can lead to warmer weather (on average this is the case) but it also means there's more energy to whip up storms or move regions of hot or cold air much further, to places that are not used to them. So unusually cold weather can in fact be a result of climate change.

jansan2• 6 years ago

Sorry, this is too cheap. Basically all you are saying is that climate may change (which it always has) and whenever there is an unusaual weather event, you can blame it on man made climate change. I am not buying this.

If you were right, we should see at least "some" sort of trend, but at least in this official graphics, I just do not see it:

https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indica...

imtringued2• 6 years ago

I think the parent merely wanted to point out that accelerated climate change (which is primarily driven by humans) can cause both record high and record low temperatures.

GnarfGnarf• 6 years ago

That's brutal. What kind of heating do these people have? Central heating, or electric registers in some rooms?

simias2• 6 years ago

I can't speak for Madrid but here in Lisbon at roughly the same latitude we have no central heating and we usually go by with a single small ~900W space heater. According to wikipedia the all time record for low temperatures was -1°C, so it's usually fine.

If the temperature was to drop to below -10°C I'm not sure what I would do. I'd try to buy a better heater, but so would half the city so that might be a problem.

Madrid tends to have more extreme weather than here though, I suspect because the ocean offers us a certain thermal inertia.

switch007• 6 years ago

I lived in Madrid over winter years ago, and it dropped to -6c for a few nights. I'm from the UK so I'm somewhat used to colder temperatures (it's 0c currently for example), but my god, that is the coldest I've ever felt in my life. I went to bed dressed in 3 layers of clothes and I was still freezing.

cosmodisk• 6 years ago

I did work at -20C some years ago in Lithuania in one of my construction gigs. It's bloody cold, yet we kind of are( or used to be) used to cold winters and people usually are well prepared: clothes, tyres, etc. At -25C it becomes difficult to breathe. Now it's all good and nice for northerners,but how the hell the Spaniards can survive it?!

Central Spain records temperatures of -25°C after snowstorm

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