2021 Weather Report for Pinoso

Pinoso has a weather station that forms a part of the AEMET network. AEMET is the Spanish Met Office, Agencia Estatal de Meteorología. So far as I know the weather station for AEMET is in the centre of Pinoso, at the Instituto José Marhuenda Prats. I think it's at the school because the bloke who started it all up taught there though that may be wrong. The man is real enough though, Agapito - always called Cápito - Gonzálvez. He's been Mr Weather in Pinoso for over 30 years now. 

If you haven't seen the AEMET site this link should go directly to the observations over the past few days. Click around the site and you'll find forecasts and a whole lot more.

There is another weather station out at Rodriguillo, which was damaged when the reed beds there went on fire in the summer. Capito got it up and running again within 8 days. There's another another on the Yecla road out of Pinoso. These two stations log their recordings on the Valencian Meteorological Association website - AVAMET. According to that website there's a third station in Pinoso at l'Herrada which, I think, is just off the road from Culebrón to Ubeda. 

If you want to have a look at the Valencia website it's on this link though it does tend to be a bit fickle and constantly change from the Castilian version to the Valencian version. If the site plays up you want Alicante Province and mid Vinalopó or in the Territori section Província d'Alacant and El Medio Vinalopó or el Vinalopó Mitjà. You can choose the date for the records too. The button to change between Castilian and Valencian is at the top right but, as I say, it's all a bit wobbly.

Anyway Capito does these roundups for the monthly weather reports. Again they tend to get published in Valenciano so this is my interpretation of his roundup for 2021. 

During 2021 it rained 68 days and there were 15 days when the temperature fell below freezing. On the other hand there were 128 days of full sun and 163 days with sunny spells as against 52 cloudy days and 22 days with full cloud cover. 

There were 162 days with dew, 22 days with mist and 2 days with hail. There was no snow recorded in 2021. There were storms on 6 days.

The hottest day of the year was the 15th August when it got to 42.5ºC and the coldest day was the 6th January when the temperature dropped to -5ºC. 

The mean high was 23ºC and the mean low was 9.7ºC.

Over the whole year 313 litres of water fell on every square metre of Pinoso and the wettest day of the year was 23rd May when we got 44 of them.

There were 808 hours when the temperature was 7ºC or below but just 60 hours when it was below freezing. Those 60 cold hours being spread between 20 different days. 

There were 80 days when the temperature was greater than 30ºC and 7 days when more than 10 litres of rain fell.

The windiest day was 12th February when it blew at 73km/h

The day when the highest recorded temperature was the lowest of the year (get that?) was 8th January, when it only got to 4.5ºC  and the day when the lowest recorded temperature was the highest was the 12th July when it never dropped below 22.5ºC. 

The overall coldest day of the year was 5th January with a mean temperature was just 2.5ºC, and the opposite was the 15th August when the mean temperature was 31.8ºC.

Weather report

Cars have thermometers nowadays. Cieza is lower than Culebrón so, as I drive to work, the temperature increases but it's interesting that there are lots of local variations all along the route.

The temperature differences between the villages that surround Pinoso can be quite marked. It's usually one or two degrees colder in Culebrón than in Pinoso for instance. In fact the weather in general can be very different over short distances. Back in 2013 to give an extreme example a hailstorm caused havoc in Paredón. In Culebrón, at the same time, it rained a bit. The distance between the two places is just over 5km.

Pinoso has an official weather station, it's official in the sense that it contributes to the AEMET network with AEMET being the State Meterological Agency. As I understand it this is because a local teacher, always referred to as Capito, started a weather station as a school project which, slowly but surely, became more professional. From time to time I have used the monthly report from that weather station on this blog. At one point the Pinoso weather station stopped reporting to AEMET and I ended up in a bit of correspondence with a local blogger about what had happened. He told me that there was another weather station In Pinoso used by IVIA - the Valencian Institute of Agricultural Research.

Whilst Capito's station is in the centre of Pinoso the IVIA station is on the Yecla road: looking at the map on the IVIA website I'd say that means they are maybe 4km apart. Yesterday AEMET gave the temperature maximum and minimum as 12.9ºC and 1ºC whilst the IVIA site 12.61ºC and 5.05ºC. That's a pretty considerable difference on the minimum temperatures. And it's not just the temperature - all of the data such as wind speed and precipitation also differ, sometimes by significant amounts.

The last time I saw a weather station it consisted of some kit, like thermometers and rain gauges, inside a slatted white painted box. The little picture at the top of this post shows the IVIA station. No slatted box to be seen. I presume that it collects and transmits data automatically to somewhere or other.

One interesting little extra on the IVIA site is that it lists "representative" local crops as artichokes irrigated almonds, celery, aubergines, broccoli, onions, plums, brussel sprouts, cauliflower, asparagus, lettuce, peaches, melon, nectarines, olives to eat and olives for oil, potatoes, cucumbers, peppers, leeks, romanesque salad leaves, watermelons, tomatoes, grapes for eating and for wine and carrots. I would never have guessed that Pinoso was good for brussels.