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With the forecast for highs of 21ºC in the Region of Murcia today, it’s worth pointing out that January 17 is the sixth anniversary of what was the start of the heaviest snowfall in Murcia in living memory.

 

Back in 2017, there was a historic amount of snowfall in the Region, with the centre of Cartagena seeing snow for the first time in 80 years, leading to road closures around the Campo de Cartagena and the Port of Mazarrón.

 

Schools had to be cancelled and a school bus even had to be rescued after 30 children became trapped inside, while similar scenes of emergency situations were seen all around the Region, which is not used to seeing so much snow.

 

 

Nothing could be further from that this year, with sunshine forecast for today and most of the rest of the week too. True, weather alerts have been issued for high winds of up to 50mph and temperatures are expected to drop somewhat over the course of this week, but this is nowhere near the extremes of cold that we saw six years ago.

 

In fact, January 2023 is on course to be one of the warmest months of January ever recorded in Spain, and the general trend with the changing climate is towards ever warmer years – before 2022, the warmest years on record were 2020 and 2017.

 

As the effects of the climate crisis become increasingly evident in our weather patterns, it becomes more imperative for individuals, organisations and governments to take action to stall the increase in the Earth’s temperature and to take measures to prepare for more extreme conditions in the future.