Santa Cruz, Funchal, Ponta do Sol and Porto Moniz recorded nights reminiscent of summer.
The ‘excessive’ air temperature this month of January in Madeira has also been surprising at night, with this Sunday being the third tropical night recorded – the minimum temperature did not drop below 20 °C – in the last two weeks.
The first tropical night was felt in Santa Cruz and Ponta do Sol in the middle of January, more precisely on the weekend of the 13th to the 14th (Saturday to Sunday). On that night reminiscent of summer, between sunset and sunrise the surface air temperature always remained above 20ºC at the IPMA stations in Santa Cruz/Aeroporto and Ponta do Sol/Lugar de Baixo. That mild night recorded minimum temperatures of 20.6 ºC, at the Airport, and 20.4 ºC, in Lugar de Baixo.
The unusual thing for the time of year – we are in the middle of winter, don’t forget – spread on the night of Thursday to Friday in Funchal/Lido (20.4 °C) and was repeated in Ponta do Sol/Lugar de Baixo ( 20.0°C). The ‘tropical’ feat of that time had the particularity of the air temperature during the early morning reaching 24.9 °C (6 hours) in Lugar de Baixo, an abnormal temperature for the season that was also felt in Lido, where the maximum during that same night it reached 24.0 °C (10 pm on Thursday).
As ‘there are no two without three’, this weekend provided another tropical night. This time in the North, with Porto Moniz recording a night in which the air temperature reached 24.2 ºC and did not cool down from 21.1 ºC. This extreme value of the minimum temperature has the relevant particularity of having been the highest minimum temperature recorded during the night in the entire network of IPMA stations in Madeira this month of January.