IF IT DOES not rain in Spain in the next few days, this November will go down on record as being the driest in 36 years, warns the State meteorological agency, AEMET.
And this is likely to spell impending disaster for water supplies – although agricultural minister Isabel Tejerina has assured on-tap water across the country is guaranteed until at least the end of the year, reservoirs are currently at an historic low of 37% - the worst in 22 years.
Autumn usually brings monsoons to the Mediterranean lasting several days, and between October and December, heavy rain is a regular feature, but the last four or five years have seen the rain dry up with few downpours and showers only appearing briefly every couple of months.
Parts of the Mediterranean and south coast have had serious trouble providing on-tap water in summer over the last two years, with record numbers of tourists and historically-low rainfall – only coastal towns with desalination plants to extract salt from sea water have had no problems in meeting demand.
Although temperatures have dropped considerably since the start of November, they are expected to rise next week – reaching as much as 23ºC to 25ºC for a few hours a day in some parts of the mainland - and AEMET predicts that the current anti-cyclone, with warm midday climates and chilly nights, will continue for the foreseeable future.
December is expected to be much warmer than usual, meaning little hope for rain next month, either.
If less than five milimetres of rainfall – or five litres per square metre – is recorded before then end of November, it will mean the final quarter of 2017 becoming the driest since records began in 1941.
For November itself, the driest on record was in 1981, and 2017 is likely to be somewhere near this if there is little or no rain in the next 12 days.
The driest November so far this century was in 2009, when temperatures were also higher than usual.
Cold nights have so far felt extremely bitter and uncomfortable this November, given the stark contrast with daytime temperatures – whilst on the Mediterranean, they have fallen to around 10ºC to 12ºC, the coldest night this month was on November 15, at -3.9ºC, and the night before – when the mercury plunged to -1.6ºC – brought the first frosts to the mainland of autumn 2017.
