05/03/2005 00:00
TW
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Staff Reporter EVERYBODY has been saying it and now the the statistics show they are right: the start of 2005 is the coldest Majorca and Minorca has experienced since 1981, and Ibiza has to search its archives 40 years back to remember such a cold start to the year. “By adding together the average monthly temperatures from several weather stations, we can show that, in the majority of cases, we have to go back to 1981 to remember such freezing temperatures in January and February”, said Agustí Jansà, the Director of the Balearic Met Office. “We can therefore conclude that 2005 has had the coldest start since 1981. The same thing more or less happened in Minorca, however in Ibiza we have to return to 1965, that is to say 40 years ago, to find such cold temperatures”, he added.

The temperatures from December, January and February were compiled to reach these conclusions, Jansà said. These three months are not the traditional winter months that will end on 21 March, but they are the meteorological winter months.

Taking the average temperature for December will not produce such drastic results, but adding the December, January and February temperatures together means that the Met Office has to search back many years before it can find such a similar cold spell in the islands.

Unfortunately with the beginning of a new week it does not look likely that things will get better for the islands.
Snow fell in regions higher than 800 metres yesterday morning but this situation changed to 400 metres during the day when the temperatures became colder. In Majorca, average temperatures were between 5.5 and 6.5 degrees in the morning in low-lying areas, these were warmer than in past days, but they didn't reach higher than 9 degrees during the rest of the day.

It is forecasted that today snow will affect regions over 800 metres and that there will be little chance of rain affecting the islands. However, the weather will get worse and colder tomorrow and Monday. Snow will fall in regions over 500 metres tomorrow, changing to 200 metres on Monday.