Spain records coldest ever temperature at -35.8°C

A horse walks along the road as snow covers the landscape in the small Pyrenees village of Esnotz, northern Spain, Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2021.
A horse walks along the road as snow covers the landscape in the small Pyrenees village of Esnotz, northern Spain, Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2021. Copyright AP Photo/Alvaro Barrientos
By Euronews with AP
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Spain is currently being battered by Storm Filomena with "heavy snowfalls" expected even at altitudes of just 200 metres

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Spain recorded its lowest temperature on Thursday with the mercury dropping to -35.8°C.

The record-breaking temperature was recorded at the Vega de Liordes weather station, located at an altitude of 1,874 metres in the northwestern province of Leon.

If confirmed by the AEMET weather agency, it will have narrowly beat the record of -34.1 °C established just the day before in the eastern Pyrenees.

Spain is currently being battered by Storm Filomena with "heavy snowfalls" expected even at altitudes of just 200 metres "in large areas of the interior of the peninsula", AEMET said on Thursday.

The capital, the north-east and the mountainous areas of the south-east could see snowfalls of up to 50 centimetres over the coming days.

Madrid saw the first snowfall in about a decade on Thursday with a 5cm coat of the white powder covering the capital, according to AEMET. Children could be seen playing and sledging in parks.

The weather agency forecast that up to 20 cm could have fallen by Friday afternoon. Despite being located over 600 metres high and near a mountain range, it is unusual for snow to settle in the Spanish capital.

The freezing temperatures recorded in Leon are not a touch on the lowest observed on continental Europe, which hit -58.1°C in Ust 'Schugor, Russia, on December 31, 1978.

France and Switzerland have also recorded colder temperatures in the past with their domestic record set respectively at -36.7°C and -41.8°C.

In the UK, the lowest the mercury has hit is -27.2°C, on two separate occasions and both time at Scottish weather stations.

The lowest temperature recorded in the Northern Hemisphere was -69.3°C, recorded in Greenland on December 22, 1991, according to the World Meteorological Organisation.

This is nearly 20°C warmer than the global record, established in July 1983 at the high-altitude Vostok weather station in Antarctica.

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