SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, Sep. 7 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Canary Islands have registered the third wettest month of August since 1961 with an average rainfall of 294% over the forecast and five liters per square meter, concentrated especially on the 31st, according to the climatological advance of the Aemet made public this Wednesday.
Likewise, August has been a warm month with an average temperature of 23.5ºC, the seventeenth warmest since 1961.
The Aemet points out that the persistence of high pressures in height over northwest Africa, low relative pressures in areas of the African coasts closest to the Canary Islands, as well as the Atlantic anticyclone displaced from its most frequent position (around the Azores), and with a lower baric gradient, it drew a synoptic situation very similar to that of last July with a south-southeast flow, at medium and high levels of the atmosphere, which was maintained for much of the month.
This scenario gave rise to two warm episodes over the archipelago, the first from day 1 to 9 and the second, somewhat more intense, from day 19 to 25, which although they did not reach the thermal values of last month and did not meet the criteria for classifying them as ‘heat waves’ did have a significant influence on the minimum temperatures, accounting for 1,542 records of tropical nights –each one corresponding to a season and day, accounting for some 97 stations, distributed throughout all the islands –including Graciosa — with record of minimum temperatures equal to or greater than 20ºC–.
In most of these stations, particularly in the coastal ones, the tropical nights extended to practically all the days of the month, of which 138 exceeded 25ºC and 4, all of them in Agüimes (Gran Canaria) on days 2, 3, 21 and 22, exceeded 30ºC of minimum temperature.
The episodes particularly affected the mid-range and summit areas of the southern half of Gran Canaria.
During the periods delimited by days 10 to 18 and 26 to 29, the establishment of the anticyclonic regime caused a drop in temperatures that, during those days, remained around the average.
In terms of rainfall, a total of four episodes were recorded on days 13 and 14, 16 and 18 and 27 and 31.
In almost all the warm or rainy episodes generated by the east-southeast flow, haze inflows occurred in height, but none of the rainy episodes left rainfall records on the islands of Lanzarote, La Graciosa and Fuerteventura.
There were also strong winds, especially the first 3 days of the month, as well as on the 20th to 23rd, resulting in 32 records of maximum gusts greater than 80 km/h and eight between 90 and 100 km/h, almost all east-southeast direction.
The maximum streak recorded during the month was measured in Tejeda (Gran Canaria), with 100 km/h on the 21st.
