According to the State Meteorological Agency (Aemet), another bout of excessive heat is expected in the Valencian Community this weekend, with peak temperatures approaching 40 degrees. However, the prolonged heat is now exacerbated by the arrival of a westerly wind beginning tomorrow, Friday, July 18th,that will be exceptionally strong on Saturday and Sunday, with gusts exceeding 45 or 50 kilometres per hour.
This circumstance has prompted Aemet to issue orange and yellow warnings for high temperatures in the province of Valencia and Alicante for tomorrow, with highs of 40 and 36 degrees, respectively. The agency’s warnings for Saturday have been reduced to yellow, with maximum temperatures ranging from 36 to 38 degrees. For these two days, Aemet predicts “significantly high maximum temperatures in southern Valencia and Alicante.”
Tomorrow’s high temperature in Valencia’s southern heartland will be 39 degrees. Temperatures are projected to increase even more on Saturday, reaching 4 degrees in Xàtiva and 38 degrees in the coastal city of Alicante. Meanwhile, low temperatures will approach 25 degrees, with blistering heat at night in several parts of the region.
Special Notice for Forest Fires
Another effect of the westerly winds is that the Valencian Government’s Emergency Coordination Centre (CEE) has issued a specific warning of exceptional risk for forest fires from Friday to Sunday due to “a worsening” of circumstances in the provinces of Valencia, Alicante, and southern Castellón.
The Ministry of Emergencies and the Interior recommends that municipalities and emergency management agencies pay close attention to and follow up on all CCE (Certification of Emergency Situations) warnings in order to activate civil protection plans early and implement appropriate preventive measures.
Municipalities and organisations are consequently encouraged to submit input on all occurrences that occur in their territories, to strengthen surveillance in areas at risk of forest fires, and to limit actions that may raise this risk.
The west breeze intensifies the heat
One of the major difficulties with this unusually scorching start to summer has been the lack of a westerly wind. Nonetheless, the June heat wave raised the temperature in Sumacàrcer to 42.2 degrees on June 29th. The month finished as the hottest on record, with 141 heat-related deaths, according to the Carlos III Health Institute’s Daily All-Cause Mortality Monitoring System (MoMo). This is the same as the previous five-year total from May 15 to July 15, as reported in today’s print issue of Levante -EMV. The official death toll from heat stroke is three: two males, aged 53, and a lady, aged 52.
In June, the territorial delegate of Aemet in the Valencian Community, Jorge Tamayo, and the head of Climatology, José Ángel Núñez, explained in the presentation of the meteorological balance of the spring, that the thermal anomaly of June, with a difference of 3.6 degrees with respect to the average since 1991, had occurred without the presence of a westerly wind, which is what really causes the thermometers to shoot up.
It is worth noting that the historical high for Valencia happened in August 2023, during a hot episode with a westerly wind, when the temperature reached 46.8 degrees at the Valencia airport station.
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