The good news is that AEMET has assured us of calm and peaceful mornings. The bad news is that AEMET has assured us of afternoons with evolving clouds that deliver locally strong showers, with storms, hail and very strong gusts of wind.
The funny thing is that this pattern (warm mornings, afternoon convention, and hail cells here and there) is the very definition of “summer storm“The worrying thing is that, well, we are in April.
“More typical of June than April.” That phrase from Rubén del Campo, spokesperson for AEMET, has appeared in (at least) four different statements so far in April alone. And that alone is indicative that something is happening.
What is happening and what is really new? AEMET forecasts they talk of “a week between April and May with atmospheric instability.” They refer to this pattern that explained: subtropical air on the surface, cold air at altitude and a lot of humidity in the environment (due to the temperature of the seas that surround us).
It is the perfect recipe for a convective party. In fact, there are eight different communities with warnings of various types for locally strong storms and coastal phenomena.
This episode is the end of a roller coaster of temperature rises and sudden drops that have made April 2026 the second warmest (more than 70 records broken) since 1990. Thinking about it, it’s not so strange: we are seeing how the climate calendar is shifting.
Climate change? AEMET, as usual, is cautious when it comes to directly attributing this episode to climate change (if there are no scientific studies on the subject). However, we know that global warming “increases the probability, intensity and precocity” of situations like these.
What we can expect. Beyond this week of rapid and internal storms (with possible hail episodes), no one knows anything. We are approaching what may be one of the episodes of Most intense El Niño in recent decades and time is completely dislocated: making medium-term predictions is becoming more difficult every day.
What does seem clear is that the world is changing and that, no matter how much we want to escape the problem, we are not prepared for it.
Image | Benbaso – Xataka
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