Cold front puts 36 Spanish provinces on alert for wind and rain

A cold front is sweeping over the Iberian peninsula from northwest to southeast after entering Spain through Galicia on Wednesday night.

On Thursday, 36 provinces and the exclave city of Melilla were on alert for wind, rain, snow and adverse sea conditions.

On Thursday evening the cold front is expected to reach the Balearic Islands, where a low-pressure area will form with winds of up to 100 kilometers per hour that will affect the archipelago and nearby parts of the mainland, said the Spanish weather service AEMET.

“There will be winds gusting up to 90 and 100km/h in inland areas of Castellón province, and around 90km/h in Almería and Menorca,” said AEMET spokesman Rubén del Campo.

Meteorologists are expecting winds of 60 to 80km/h in many other parts of the peninsula. Snowfall is expected at an elevation of around 1,000 to 1,200 meters.

The cold front is also bringing rain to much of Spain, with particularly intense rainfall in the northwest and in the Balearic Islands, which this year experienced extensive damage from a gota fría episode in October. A gota fría, literally “cold drop,” is used in Spain to describe a phenomenon when a mass of polar air arrives on the Mediterranean coast.

Daytime temperatures are dropping noticeably, and coastal areas are bracing for dangerous sea conditions in Galicia, Asturias, Cantabria, parts of the Valencia region, eastern Andalusia and the Balearic Islands.

English version by Susana Urra.