Get ready to try and beat the heat in Balearics. | Josep Bagur Gomila

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AEMET, which is Spain’s national meteorological organisation, is expecting temperatures to soar between now and August and this morning, the Balearics, along with other parts of Spain, were placed on weather alert for the first heatwave of the year.
Ruben del Campo said that the next three months are going to be unusually hot, probably the hottest since records began in 1981.

He said that from Thursday, maximum temperatures are going to start to climb and the first heatwave of the year to grip large parts of the country, in particular the Balearics and the Canary Islands, on either Saturday or Sunday.

Maximum temperatures will reach between 35ºC and 40C and will remain high for much of next week.
The World Meteorological Organization defines a heatwave as an “unusually warm weather” that persists for “at least two days” with “records above the thresholds”.

As Ruben del Campo explained, in Spain, Aemet forecasts that “extreme temperatures must be registered among the five percent of the warmest, affect 10 percent of the [meteorological] stations and last three days at least.”
The heatwave beginning this week meets all three conditions.

The heatwave is thanks to Anticyclone Scipio which has been bringing hot air from Africa to the central Mediterranean, causing weeks of scorching temperatures.

An anticyclone – an area of high pressure – is the opposite of a cyclone. Some countries name anticyclones if they are likely to bring severe weather such as searing heat.
This is similar to the way most countries, including the UK, name areas of low pressure, or cyclones, if they bring severe weather in the form of heavy rain or strong winds.