September cold snap takes the Balearics by surprise

PALMA
THE minimum temperatures registered in the early hours of yesterday morning were the lowest recorded in the region during September for the past 23 years.

Agustí Jansa, director of the Balearic meteorological centre, said yesterday that the temperatures were seven degrees under the normal for this time of the year. It would, he said, be necessary to go back in the archives as far as 1964 to find temperatures under 7.6 Celsius which were registered at Palma's Son Sant Joan airport before first light yesterday morning. Majorca was not the only island to suffer a cold snap - at the same time, temperatures on Ibiza plummeted to 12.1 degrees, a September record only equalled as far back as 1979. Minorca had not witnessed such cold for this time of year since 1984 when 10.4 Celsius was registered. Jansa explained that this steep decline in temperatures is due to a cold front sweeping in across the country from the Atlantic over recent days, which has come to rest over the Mediterranean. It had started to get noticeably colder from about 11pm on Thursday evening and in spite of record lows in the early hours of yesterday, temperatures were due to rise during the course of the day.

The difference between these stark minimum temperatures experienced yesterday and the average recorded during the month of September over the past thirty years is also significant, said Jansen as in some cases “the difference has been as much as seven degrees Celsius.” This was the case on Minorca where yesterday's early morning reading of 10.4 degrees was 6.9 degrees lower than the recorded average for September; in Pollensa on Majorca a minimum of 9.9 degrees was registered - a difference of 6.9 degrees; and at Palma airport where the difference against norm was 6.8 degrees.