Super anticyclone brings very dry and cold weather to Portugal: until when?
High guarantees are not trée, and although this means absolute stability from a meteorological point of view – a state of the sunny and dry weather, there are increased risks for the country if this situation continues for longer. They may arise at the water level and, for example,. The first half of January is already over and with rare extraordinary days, the days have been Mondays, stable and sunny. For a season like the one we’re in – the winter – the rain is very necessary to prevent the summer, being like “gold” for the fields and extremely essential for soils and agricultural activity. The really enicious thing.
The ‘keys’ we need to understand the current weather scenario in mainland Portugal and other European countries are the super anticyclone (super, due to the pressure values it presents, reaching 1040 hPa) present in north central Europe – wedged between France and the British Isles – and a steady stream from the east. Incidentally, geopotential values at 500 hPa are very rare for a month of January.
These two ingredients, when working together, provide a stability apparently lasting, especially if we take into account the model medium and long term forecast maps ECMWF. Thus, apparently, the fifteenth of January and perhaps the first days of February from the second to this situation. 2022 has yet to begin and in meteorological terms, at least in this part of the European continent, we are being dominated by a meteorological “doldrums”.
But there are exceptions. One of them could eventually get stuck with occasional and scattered drizzles on the Portuguese western façade.. Even so, they will be residual and little results to achieve alleviate the meteorological drought, increase water levels in the soil and favor water tables and rivers. The other exception may be eventual previous cold air mass inflows from Europe, which could intensify punctually as frosts.
The Iberian Peninsula acting as a freezer and thermal inversions
Another meteorological certainty is the cold, which, if we look carefully at the thermal trend of the next few days, reveals a gradual drop in temperatures – especially the minimum. There will be variations in several locations in the Portuguese interior. This is mainly due to to the anticyclonic time, but also to the relief of the Iberian Peninsula, whose peculiar and complex can manifest itself as a “mini-continent”.
That is, the Iberian relief, due to its characteristics and given this anticyclonic situation (almost absolute stability), tends to cold freezer, making the surface of Portugal and Spain like a “”.
For, less important, there is that it is not the last an increased likelihood of ice formation and frost associated with frigid atmospheric temperatures – further inland North and Center of the country; ONLY fogs or mists, sometimes persistent and appear in Trás-os-Montes and Beira Alta valleys; and also how thermal inversions – when you are at the bottom of a colder valley, or your city is surrounded by mountains than at the top.
The status of the thermal version can be harmful to health (respiratory diseases, etc.) as the lower air layer retains credited, for bridal particle holder.