Weather

July was very hot, say the weather people

The beach was the place to be during July. (The beach here is Cala Molins in Cala San Vicente.) | Andrew Ede

Majorca Daily Bulletin reporterAlcudia05/08/2015 00:00

It shouldn't come as any great surprise that the Spanish meteorological agency, Aemet, has confirmed that July in the Balearics was very hot to extremely hot. It was not as hot on the islands, however, as some parts of the Spanish mainland, where the highest temperature last month was 45.2C in Cordoba, Andalusia, on 6 July. Zaragoza in Aragon registered a high of 44.5C on 7 July, with Murcia turning in 43C on the same day. For Spain as a whole, Aemet says that July surpassed the previous absolute maximum average monthly value, which was 26.2C for August 2003, and it did so by three tenths of a degree.

The heatwave started, according to Aemet, on 26 June and it has barely abated since then. In Majorca there have been, as elsewhere in Spain, peaks of this heatwave, the most sustained period having been early in the month. A temperature of 39.8C recorded in Sa Cabaneta (Marratxi) on 4 July would seem to have been the highest.

For an impression as to how hot it was in July, we have tracked early morning (around 6am) and daytime coastal and inland highs for the northern part of the island. That early month heatwave led to the highest coastal and inland temperatures occurring on 7 July. These were, respectively, 37.4C and 39.2C, the temperature in Sa Pobla, which is typically one of the hottest places on Majorca. For the three days prior to 7 July, the inland high had exceeded 37 degrees.

These were the highest values for the month, with highs (inland) later in the month having been 37.1C on 22 July, 36.5C on 24 July and 36.2C on 29 July. On only two days - 24 July and 30 July - did the temperature fail to reach 30 degrees or more. The inland highs on both days were 29.7C and those by the coast a degree lower.

The early-morning temperature was over 20 degrees every day through July, the maximums having been 28C on 22 July and 27C on 2 July.