THE coldest-ever temperature in history over the week that Easter 2016 has fallen in was in the centre-northern province of Palencia, in Castilla y León, at -7.9ºC – and the warmest, curiously, was in its 'rhyming province' on the east coast, Valencia, at 33.2ºC.
State meteorological agency AEMET has studied its figures over the last 35 years across the country for the week of March 20 to 28 in a bid to work out what could have been the likely forecast for Easter this year, but the variations are so huge that only vague averages could be given.
On average, it has rained for between three and four days over this period since 1981, meaning a 40% chance of a wet Easter this year, and average temperatures for this week sit between 12ºC and 14ºC – but this takes the vast climatic disparities across the whole country into account, as well as thermometer readings from the coldest part of the night in northern, inland areas compared with the warmest part of the day in Mediterranean and southern locations – even without including the Canary Islands in the equation.
Average temperatures for this last full week in March have sat at around 8ºC in the northern half, with lows of 3ºC and highs of 14ºC, cloudy skies and fog, reaching an average of 16ºC in southern and eastern coastal areas, with typical highs of 20ºC and lows of 10ºC.
For the Balearic Islands, averages reach around 15ºC and, in the Canaries, 19ºC, whilst altitudes of over 2,000 metres sit at a chilly 6.6ºC.
Over the week Easter falls on this year, in 1988, records of 33.2ºC were seen in Valencia – the warmest province in the country that year over the last full week in March – followed closely by 32.6ºC in the province of Alicante which borders Valencia to the south.
But in the same week in 2007, Castilla y León was in the depths of a harsh winter: Palencia's -7.9ºC in the daytime was not out of the ordinary in the context of its wider region, with Salamanca seeing the mercury plummet to -7ºC, Valladolid suffering -6.6ºC, León lighting the fires and wrapping itself in blankets to combat temperatures of -6.4ºC, and the region's most northerly province of Burgos, whose capital is famous for its soft white cheese and Spain's second-largest and arguably most breathtakingly-spectacular cathedral, shivered as the mercury plunged to -5.5ºC.
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