Aragon broke all its records with the wettest month of October since records began: not less than 144 liters per square meter, on average, throughout the Community. Last week’s historic rainfall sparked the stats, but it’s not all from DANA.
Days like Pilar were also particularly rainy, although the water did not spoil the offering. It effectively forced the postponement of one of the drone shows planned in the official holiday programming.
The records for this month of October are well above the reference series, which goes from 1991 to 2020. But what is curious, underlines the territorial delegate of the State Meteorological Agency (Aemet), Rafael Requena , is that “being humid, it was also a hot month”, almost a degree above normal.
The month of #October 2024 was the wettest ever #Aragon of the entire series since 1961@eltiempo_atv @AEMET_Esp @ElTiempo_tve @AragonMeteo @ElTiempoes @ElTiempoA3 @periodicoaragon @heraldoes @lasextameteo @sibilafc @JoannaIvars @slaplana_tve @IsabelIsamoren @Tiempo_Mercedes pic.twitter.com/W9wrUGlYIf
– AEMET_Aragon (@AEMET_Aragon) November 5, 2024
This anomaly also occurred in August, another month that stood out for being humid and closed two degrees above average. “September was also wet, but the anomaly, in this case, was cold“, Requena remembers.
The fact that October was hot is of great importance in explaining everything that happened last week. “The air, The higher the temperature, the greater the water vapor retention capacity. This is why it rains more in tropical areas than in the poles. We are seeing this humid but at the same time warm character this autumn both in Aragon and throughout Spain,” indicates the territorial delegate.
Within the region, the regions closest to Castellón and Tarragona (Matarraña, Bajo Aragón and Maestrazgo) are those that have reached the highest records. Between October 31 and November 1, Valderrobres added more than 200 liters per square meter in 48 hours, accumulating 150 in just 24.
“The Guadalope held up through the Calanda Reservoir. “It was 20% and after this episode it went to 70%.”Requena said. In terms of intensity, the case of Montalbán stands out, with ten minutes of 25 liters per square meter. “Extrapolating, we would be talking about 150 liters per hour, much more than double that of a torrential rain, but it did not reach that much. It remained at around 100”, he adds.
The trend, at least as far as temperatures are concerned, seems to continue these first days of November, with maximums of up to 20 degrees and minimums of 10, unusual values for a month in which it should have started to freeze. “If what fell at the end of October had arrived as snow, we would have had another Gloria or Filomena, but these episodes are more typical of months like January,” he says.
