Weather in Spain right now

Five kinds of climate

• The Canary Islands have mild weather all year, with the trade wind blowing from the north-east. In Tenerife and Gran Canaria the north is often cloudy while the south is sunny; Lanzarote and Fuerteventura are flatter, drier and windier.
• The Mediterranean costas and the Balearics have hot, dry summers and mild winters, with most of the rain in autumn, when storms can arrive suddenly after a hot summer.
• The Costa del Sol and Cádiz are the warmest part of the mainland in winter; around the Strait of Gibraltar the wind (the easterly levante or the westerly poniente) decides the beach day.
• Northern Spain is green for a reason: cooler, cloudier and wetter, with Atlantic swell all year.
• Inland Spain and the mountains swing between extremes: Seville and Madrid bake in summer, Madrid and Salamanca wake to frost on winter mornings, and in the Pyrenees and Sierra Nevada the temperature drops by roughly 6 °C for every 1,000 m (3,300 ft) you climb, so the ski slopes can be below freezing while the coast below is mild.

How warm is the sea?

On the Mediterranean the sea is at its warmest in August and September and coolest in February and March. In the Canaries the water stays between roughly 18 and 24 °C all year, which is why winter swimming there feels so different from the mainland.

Wind and waves

The wind figure on each card is the one to watch for a beach day: above roughly 15 mph the sand starts to blow on open beaches and the sea gets choppy. On the same windy day, a bay sheltered by a headland can be calm while the next beach is white with waves, and the webcams show it straight away.