Spain recorded its lowest temperature on Thursday with the mercury dropping to -35.8°C. The record-breaking temperature was recorded at the Vega de Liordes weather station, located at an altitude of 1,874 meters in the northwestern province of Leon. If confirmed by the AEMET weather agency, it will have narrowly beat the record of -34.1 °C established just the day before in the eastern Pyrenees. Spain is currently being battered by Storm Filomena with "heavy snowfalls" expected even at altitudes of just 200 metres "in large areas of the interior of the peninsula", AEMET said on Thursday. The capital, the northeast and the mountainous areas of the south-east could see snowfalls of up to 50 centimeters over the coming days. The freezing temperatures recorded in Leon are not a touch on the lowest observed in continental Europe, which hit -58.1°C in Ust 'Schugor, Russia, on Dec. 31, 1978. France and Switzerland have also recorded colder temperatures in the past with their domestic record set respectively at -36.7°C and -41.8°C. In the UK, the lowest the mercury has hit is -27.2°C, on two separate occasions and both time at Scottish weather stations. The lowest temperature recorded in the Northern Hemisphere was -69.3°C, recorded in Greenland on Dec. 22, 1991, according to the World Meteorological Organisation. This is nearly 20°C warmer than the global record, established in July 1983 at the high-altitude Vostok weather station in Antarctica. — Euronews
