The spokesman for the Meteorology Statal Agency (aemet), Rubén del Campo, has warned this Friday that “cannot be ruled out” a cold wave on the European continent in the early part of winter in the face of the possibility of “a stratospheric polar vortex breakuphigher than usual.
It is being heard, he continued, that a break in the stratospheric polar vortex could occur in the coming weeks, with the consequent departure of the cold air confined in the Arctic towards low latitudes and possible subsequent effects in terms of a more continuous rainfall regime in our country.
“The pieces of the atmospheric puzzle fit with a scenario of a possible break of the stratospheric polar vortex, but it is not yet certain that it will happen,” he warned.
And in the event that it does happen, it is still impossible to specify whether this outflow of cold air from the arctic latitudes would give rise to a cold wave in Spain or in Europe, he said. “We cannot know yet because we would have to see in which area this evacuation of cold air occurs“, has added.
Another of its longer-term effects is that it gives rise to a more frequent rainas happened for example, in the spring of 2018.
“This is not something that always happens and we cannot know if it will happen on this occasion, because the first thing that polar vortex would have to break and then see how the atmosphere evolves,” he insisted.
In any case, “it is necessary to monitor the atmospheric evolution and see how all this evolution takes shape in the coming weeks, because at the moment, it is too soon to know what will finally happen,” he indicated.
Cold tongue since Monday
A weekend marked by the anticyclonic situation, with sunny skies and mild temperatures in the central hours of the day, will perhaps be the last meteorological breath before the incursion of a cold tongue that from Monday, the thermometers will collapse in almost the entire country.
East front will penetrate on Sunday morning through Galicia leaving abundant rains that will spread in the evening to the Cantabrian Sea and Castilla y León, and it will be at the beginning of next week when the front will continue advancing with rains, which, in its path, will mainly affect the north and east of the peninsula , also to the Balearic Islands, to make way for a northwesterly wind regime that will favor “temperatures on Monday to drop sharply and in a general way”, up to 6 or 8 degrees in interior points.
The drop in temperatures will continue on Tuesday to reach “next week’s peak of cold on Wednesday“, as explained by Rubén del Campo, with heladas in large areas of the interiorespecially in the north and east of the peninsula, and with maximums that will remain below 15 degrees from Monday to Wednesday in most of the country.
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“It is already about cold typical of the time of year, even in some points a little cooler than normal“, has qualified Del Campo.
As for the rains, on Tuesday and Wednesday they will affect Galicia, the Cantabrian Sea, the Pyrenees and the Balearic Islands above all, without ruling out, in a very weak way, other parts of the Peninsula, but the probability is not too high; the snow level will be around 1,200 to 1,400 meters.