Ourense is synonymous with heat and 40ºC in summer

The ourensans are more accustomed to the heat of what we would commonly think for one of the Galician provinces. The municipality has broken the record Several times in the last decades of the highest temperatures marked in Europe. It is not that it has exceeded the absolute figure, but has exceeded other typically torrid cities on the same dates, and for a notable difference.

The Coasts of the Atlantic Ocean have always been famous for being cold and wet. Even in summer, Galicia enjoys softer temperatures than the rest of the peninsula due to pure oceanic climate. Well, at least in almost all its territory, because if we take into account Ourense this premise may not be fulfilled.

Embedded between green mountains and bathed by the Miño, Ourense is, without a doubt, somewhat peculiar. And, although it is of a very Galician character, and it has nothing to envy landscapes and atmosphere to its sister provinces, instead of having a purely oceanic climate sometimes There are more typical episodes of subtropical areas. This has led to the records of maximum temperatures several times over the last decades.

Galician, but hot

The previous occasion was in 2017, when Ourense beat the maxim during the month of May. At that time, the city reached 37.6 ºC (together with Ribadavia), which meant the breakdown of the European record for those dates. At that time, the entire peninsula lived a very hot climate for spring, but especially the Ourensana capital, which recorded throughout the month sustained temperatures above 30 ºCusually reaching 36 ºC.

In 2013, in full heat wave of Julio, Ourense reached 45 ° Cwith a thermal sensation of up to 51 ºC, while in Seville, a typically hot city, the 45 ° C were reached, and that in Europe The maximums were around 40 ºC.

In 2012, this city was also among the hottest spring, reaching temperatures comparable to those of the southern peninsular. In July 1990, the extreme figure of 42.2 ºC was reached in Ourense a record number, again, for those dates. And so the account becomes long, with numerous similar episodes. How do you explain that Ourense is one of the hottest cities being so north?

However, we do not need to go back back in time to identify the peculiar warmth that the climate of this Galician province entails. According to the weather file prepared by Meteoblue During the last days of the current month of June the maximum temperature has risen until touching the 35 ° Cwhich, once again, consolidates it as one of the European regions with the warmest climate.

A subtropical climate in Galicia

In 1900, Wladimir Peter Köppen designed a Climate Classification System. This consists of a global natural climate classification that identifies each type of climate with a series of letters that indicate the behavior of temperatures and rainfall that characterizes this type of climate. According to this classification, Galicia is in a pure or subocean oceanic climate, identified with CWB and CWC figures.

However, Ourense does not enter into this classification, but corresponds to a CSA climate, that is, a typical Mediterranean climate. The typical Mediterranean is characterized by dry and hot summers, with average temperatures above 22 ° C and wet and rainy winters, with soft temperatures. The colder the month, according to this system, the rainiest results; Already the reverse, the hotter the month, the drier results, although they do not have to coincide exactly.

In an oceanic climate, such as the rest of Galicia, however, summers are much cooler than in areas with subtropical or Mediterranean humid climate. Why does it depart so much from the rest of the region? The answer is undoubtedly in the orography. The Valles del Miño and Sil They produce a geographical barrier that directs the weather.

Thus, there is a kind of thermal well promoted by a thermal investment effect. This phenomenon occurs when the coldest layers and close to the ground cannot ascend since they are blocked by a still cold layer. This generates a layer of clouds and calima over Ourense, which causes an increase in temperatures in the area due to a local greenhouse effect, where radiation from the bouncing surface. Thus, although the morning dawns fresh, as the day takes place, solar radiation heats the air that remains imperturbable in the same area.

This orographic configuration, in fact, would have been responsible for THE EXPLOSION OF LIFE that the region has lived In the last 120,000 yearsafter glaciation. As indicated by the geographers of the Department of Xeography of the University of Santiago de Compostela, the diversity of temperatures responds to the existing contrasts between the different areas of Galician geography.

These contrasts, in turn, must, as we said, to the so particular geographical configuration of Galicia in combination with the distances that are even the Atlantic Ocean. Thus, both in the interior valleys of Miño and Sil, and in the interior depressions of Verín and Monforte, there are very high temperatures compared to northern Galicia, where you can register up to twenty degrees less for being subjected to fresher winds, from the ocean.

In Xataka | At the end of May we reached 40ºC: it is only the appetizer of the decimer summer a consecutive warmer than normal according to aemet

In Xataka | The Mediterranean is more than two degrees above normal: and it is something that has serious consequences in Spain