when Albacete set the record for a capital at -24ºC

Europe has started 2026 with cold. Very cold. But even the icy winds that have hit part of the continent and the peninsula these days, sinking the thermometer below 15 ºC, they pale when compared to what Castilla-La Mancha experienced in the early stages of 1971. That year left a meteorological curiosity in Albacete, a record that has remained unbeatable since then in the historical records of the Aemet: the coldest temperature ever remembered in a provincial capital, neither more nor less than -24 degrees.

The most curious thing is that not even that value (more typical of other Siberian latitudes) marks the record of cold registered by the agency in Spain.

“Extreme values”. The Aemet not only helps us know the weather in the ‘future’, to know if this week it is going to rain or be sunny, we should dust off the winter scarves and gloves or we can give the anoraks a break. The agency also allows us to know what the weather was like in our cities 10, 30, 50 years ago… even more, almost a century ago, something that is possible thanks to its series of “absolute extreme values”. The service (available online) details the record measurements associated with each weather station since 1920.

What does that mean? That we can know the record values ​​of rain, temperatures, snowfall or gusts of wind captured by each of the stations managed by Aemet in the 50 provinces of Spain, in addition to the cities of Ceuta and Melilla. Their data must be handled with some caution (especially in comparisons) because they are subject to important handicaps.

Aemet does not clarify, for example, whether all the sensors have been operational for the same amount of time or how long each one has been working. Another key fact is that within the same region (or even locality) there may be thermal differences or significant rainfall. It all depends on where the sensor is installed.

A station located in a port area may collect very different values ​​than another located within the same municipal area but in the heart of the urban area or in a higher area, such as an airport. In fact, it is not strange that Aemet has sensors that collect information near the terminals.

One piece of information: -24ºC. Taking into account the above, the historical record of the Aemet leaves a curious fact, one that I remembered recently in X Vicente Aupí, popularizer and astrophotographer: on January 3, 1971 Albacete the thermometers dropped neither more nor less than -24º. The data was obtained at the air base and is interesting for several reasons. Not only is it the lowest value recorded in the city since records began, it is also the coldest confirmed in a provincial capital.

Freezer records. The next lowest value among the provincial capitals was experienced by Burgos that same day (January 3, 1971), when the mercury dropped to -22. Vitoria and Teruel follow in the ranking. The first recorded -21 ºC on Christmas Day 1962, the second endured the same temperature on January 12, 2021. These are surprisingly low data, although in recent decades Aemet has reported a few measurements below -15º.

Meteorological bulletin of January 3, 1971, when the station located in Albacete recorded a minimum of -24 ºC, a record value among the provincial capitals of Spain.

Extract from the meteorological bulletin of December 17, 1963, when a minimum of -30 ºC was recorded at the Calamocha-VOR observatory station, province of Teruel.

to stay at home. The most striking thing about January 3, 1971 is that the thermometer not only collapsed in Albacete. Another interesting resource that Aemet offers is the newspaper archive of the ‘Meteorological Bulletin’a part edited by the agency’s predecessors between March 1893 and well into the 21st century. On its website today we can consult practically all of its digitized issues from 1894 to 2007. Among them is the census of that Sunday, January 3, 1971.

And what does it tell us? That day the people of Albacete were not the only ones who faced a wave of polar cold. Although the city took the cake, in Burgos they scored -22º, in Valladolid, Teruel and Daroca -19º and -18º in Cuenca or La Molina. Some of these values ​​were also obtained at aerodromes, just as happened in Albacete, where that day the thermometers they did not go beyond -6º.

In all the provincial capitals of Spain, that day the mercury did not rise above 10 ºC, the maximum recorded in Almería, Cádiz and Castellón.

The coldest day? Yes. And no. The figure for Albacete is a record among provincial capitals, but in Spain we have endured even colder days. At the end of 1963, the residents of a small town in Teruel saw how the mercury dropped until it reaches -30 ºC. That is the surprising minimum temperature recorded on December 17 of that year at the Calamocha-VOR observatory, located in the municipality of Fuentes Claras. As remembered in 2023 Aemet itself, it is the “cold record in populated areas of Spain.”

“In the 21st century it may seem like it belongs to a distant past. The truth is that in the middle of the 20th century the geographical triangle Teruel, Calamocha-Molina de Aragón recorded values ​​below -20 ºC almost every decade, which has meant that it has since been considered the pole of the Spanish cold”, relates the agency.

In 2021, in full storm Filomenathere were those who recorded values ​​below -30 ºC in Spain, but under conditions not recognized by Aemet.

Images | AEMET 1 and 2 and Gabriel Villena (Flickr)

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