Winter to make cold and blustery exit with Force 8 Scirocco winds

While February has brought the meteorological winter to a close, the astronomical winter is still on its way out, and it is expected to make a cold and blustery exit.

Cloudy skies will dominate most of the weekend, with isolated showers being forecast for Sunday, Malta International Airport’s met office said.

On Saturday, strong winds blowing from an East-Southeast direction are expected to reach Force 7 to 8, whipping up very rough seas.

While the sea will remain unsettled until Sunday, the day is expected to be calmer than Saturday, as Force 6 winds from the easterly direction back East-Northeast and gradually die down to Force 5.

Between Saturday and Sunday, the air temperature will range between lows of 7°C and highs of 13°C, with the maximum temperatures feeling even colder as a result of the strong winds that will characterise the weekend.

“The Scirocco will strengthen… Sciroccos occur in advance of a low pressure system moving eastward across the southern Mediterranean Sea or northern Africa. Air from high pressure over the Sahara Desert rushes in to fill this low pressure system,” Malta Weather Islands said in its own forecast.

The sky will be predominantly overcast. The air will be hazy at times due to airborne fine desert sand. This dust will be deposited in the rain showers that will affect the Maltese Islands from time to time. Rain is more likely on Saturday and Sunday.

February rain and sunshine

The first day in February, which produced 3.2mm of rain together with hail and the month’s strongest wind gust of 55 knots, may have raised hopes that February’s rainfall would partly make up for the previous two winter months.

However, by the end of the month, only 4.0 mm of rain had been measured, making last February one of the driest Februaries on the Meteorological Office’s records.

Last meteorological winter yielded 115.8mm of precipitation, or just under half the total rainfall expected during this season according to the 1991-2020 climate norm.

The Maltese islands last experienced a winter season that was wetter than the climate norm between December 2014 and February 2015, back when 312.7mm of precipitation had been measured.

What the winter months lacked in rainfall and thunderstorms, just three for the whole season, was made up for in sunshine hours. Clearer skies were observed throughout the season, with each month’s cloud cover being lower than expected. These lower cloud covers partly contributed to the clocking of almost 55 sunshine hours in excess of the seasonal norm of 522 sunshine hours.

The winter months maintained an average air temperature that was 0.6°C lower than the climate norm of 13.3°C.

While the maximum air temperature for the season was recorded on Boxing Day at 18.9°C, the lowest temperature plummeted to 4.2°C on January 25.

A browse through the Meteorological Office’s archives reveals that the lowest temperature ever since 1923 was recorded on 29 January, 1981, when the mercury had dipped to a chilly 1.4°C.