Spain’s first winter storm blankets half the Peninsula with snow
Large parts of Spain woke up to a blanket of snow on Tuesday morning as their first major storm of the winter arrived. This prompted the country’s Civil Protection Authority to place ten regions under a state of alert.
Up to now Spain had been experiencing a relatively mild start to the winter, but the arrival of the storm brought plummeting temperatures and heavy snowfalls, especially across eastern parts of the country. Jijona and Taragona were just two cities which woke to vivid wintry scenes yesterday morning.
The snow blocked dozens of roads and several mountain passes, some which were subsequently closed or left only accessible by the use of snow chains. The motorway linking Madrid and Barcelona was also closed temporarily near Zaragoza.
On Tuesday Spain’s weather service, the Instituto Nacional de Meteorologia (INM), issued warning’s for heavy rain, snow and strong winds. As much as 20cm (8inches) of snow was forecast for the highest ground in the centre of the Peninsula, with 3 to 6cm (around 1 to 2 inches) across the Sierra Nevada.
The cold weather had already begun setting in across the eastern mainland and the Balearics last weekend, with freezing temperatures and snow falls recorded across the island of Mallorca. As the cold weather moved in yesterday across the mainland it triggered a huge surge in the demand for electricity, beating the previous record set on January 27th 2005.
Conditions are expected to improve slowly over the next few days.
