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We’ve barely had time to shake the rain off our umbrellas after the torrential downpours of last weekend but the notoriously fickle Spanish winter weather has thrown us another curveball with some of the coldest temperatures of the season.

 

Widespread alerts have be activated by the State Meteorological Agency for Wednesday January 7 as the country braces itself for snow, wind, treacherous seas and plummeting temperatures. The experts are predicting lows of -6°C in Girona and Huesca, -5°C in Ávila and Cuenca and an incredible -14°C in Parameras de Molina (Guadalajara). Early this morning, a red level of "extraordinary danger" was issued by Aemet, but this has since been downgraded to orange.

 

Specifically, Huesca, Zaragoza, León, Zamora, Lleida, central Navarra and Álava will be under a yellow warning for snow. Meanwhile, Huesca, Girona, Lleida, Gran Canaria, La Palma, La Gomera, El Hierro and Tenerife have been issued with a yellow warning for wind.

 

 

Likewise, the cold will trigger yellow warnings in Almería, Córdoba, Granada, Jaén, Sevilla, Mallorca, Cantabria del Ebro, Ávila, Segovia, Soria, Albacete, Ciudad Real, Cuenca, Tarragona, Sierra de Madrid, Murcia, Cantabrian slope of Navarra, central Navarra, Navarrese Pyrenees, Alicante, Castellón and Valencia.

 

At the same time, Asturias (western and eastern coasts), the Balearic Islands (Mallorca and Menorca, with yellow and orange alerts, respectively), Cantabria (coastal area), Tarragona, Girona, Guipúzcoa, Vizcaya, Melilla, Gran Canaria, La Gomera and Tenerife will be under alert for rough seas.

 

Aemet is forecasting significant snow accumulations in the Pyrenees and the Cantabrian Mountains, and the potential for snowfall at low elevations in northern Spain. Frost is also expected in the Balearic Islands and across much of inland Spain. Furthermore, very strong gusts of trade winds are forecast for the Canary Islands, along with westerly and northwesterly winds along the Cantabrian coast, the Pyrenees, the Empordà region and the lower Ebro Valley.

 

Despite this decidedly chilly outlook, most of Spain can expect bright, sunny skies on Wednesday January 7 and after this cold snap, we can look forward to climbing temperatures for the rest of the week.

 

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Images: Aemet