It's not just your feeling: Barcelona has seen less sun than Berlin this week
In the last seven days the Catalan capital has only had 25 hours of sunshine
BarcelonaWhen will we see the sun again? This is the question that many Catalans have asked themselves in recent days after seeing how, for days and days, the cloudiness in the sky left a grey sky and a humid environment, but without rain. The person responsible for this situation, which has been experienced in a large part of the country –with the exception of the Pyrenees, which have seen the sun every day of the week– has been a flow of humid wind from the sea.
This phenomenon has been responsible for forming low clouds on the coast and the pre-coast, but without the push or atmospheric conditions necessary to leave rain. The situation has started to change this Friday, with the first drizzle, and will change radically on Saturday, when a front will sweep through Catalonia and leave more general and abundant rain.
Focusing on this lack of sunshine, it is important to know that Barcelona is one of the European cities with the highest average hours of sunshine in the month of February. However, in the last seven days the situation has turned around and Barcelona has come to be practically at the bottom of the list of major European cities in terms of sunshine hours.
If we look at the total hours of sunshine accumulated between the 12th and 20th of February, we see that some of the places that we traditionally associate with bad weather and clouds are leading the ranking: Bilbao (54 hours), Berlin (45 hours), Prague (43 hours) and Oviedo hours of sunshine.
Other cities on the Atlantic coast, such as A Coruña or Maastricht, have 30 and 40 hours of sunshine accumulated respectively, and only the British Isles have clearly experienced a much more overcast week than the Catalan coast. However, this situation has its days numbered, because on Sunday and Monday many clearings will open, although on Tuesday and Wednesday a new change in weather could arrive in our country.
An anomaly in the month of February
On average, Barcelona sees the sun for 163 hours in February, making it one of the sunniest cities in the world. Nearby we find places like Madrid (175) or Rome (133), which also have quite a few hours of sunshine, but Bilbao (97), Paris (84), Berlin (78) and London (66) show us that seeing the sun shine in the sky is rare during this winter month. However, during these days this statistic has been reversed, as the anticyclonic dominance in a good part of Europe has led to stability and clear skies, in clear contrast to the weather we have had at home.
