In short sleeves and on the beach, as the year came to an end in the Alicante Province. This was how many people said goodbye to 2022 with more than pleasant temperatures, inappropriate for the time of the year, well in excess of twenty degrees, with the Climatology Laboratory of the University of Alicante confirming figures that are well above the average for recent years.
” We appear to be witnessing fewer and fewer cold spells at Christmas,” says climatologist Jorge Olcina, who said that “the end-of-year temperatures over the last two years are between five and six degrees above the average maximum temperature for December in the Alicante Province”.
The data confirms what we all know of course, a sensation shared by the people of Alicante where coats, at least during the day, became an accessory, carried in the back of the car, ‘just in case’.
The year 2022 has seen one of the highest temperatures in the last week of the year in Alicante , close to 22 degrees (21.6), which has only been exceeded on three previous occasions (2015, with 22 .2 degrees; in 2017, with 23 degrees, and in 2021, with 23.9 degrees), temperatures that are far removed from the coldest year in recent times in the Alicante capital, where, in 2013 the mercury was below 15 degrees.
As Olcina points out, “in the last ten years there has been a tendency towards a predominance of anticyclonic situations with maximum temperatures above the average”. “This has a clearly positive effect on tourist activity in the province,” he added, alluding to the sector that benefits the most when temperatures are pleasant.
Historically, according to the State Meteorological Agency (Aemet), the mercury reached 23.6 degrees at the end of the year in 1996. On New Years Day, however, we saw a maximum of 21 degrees and a minimum of ten degrees, temperatures that they would ‘cry out for’ in the UK and Ireland.
Unfortunately, though, it will now start to go downhill as, in general, temperatures are expected to drop gradually at the start of 2023, up to a 17 maximum and 6 minimum forecast for the night of The Three Kings.
This article was written by Kevin Reardon https://www.theleader.info/
