A tropical day in early spring. This was the case on March 21, 1974 in the Gurahonc commune in the Arad county, where the temperature exceeded 30 ºC. It was the earliest of the year that the country had recorded such a high temperature, suitable for the month of June. Why is the record so impressive and when was it above 30 degrees in March?

The maximum was +30.7 ºC in Gurakhonka on that day in March 1974. The norm for this period would be 11-12 C, so we have a deviation of almost 20 degrees. At the opposite pole was the day of March 21, 2018, when at noon in the commune of Arad county it was a maximum of -0.3 C and it snowed.

According to ANM data sent by HotNews.ro, on the same day extremely high temperatures were recorded in Sakuen (Bihor), +29 ºC and in Varadia de Mures (+28.7 ºC).

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“Tropical days” are what meteorologists call days when the maximum temperature exceeds 30°C, and they usually occur between the second half of May and the first half of September at low altitudes. The example of Gurahonț shows that they can appear at the beginning of the third decade of March, while at the end of the year there was only one surprising example in November (30.5 ºC in Calarasi, November 1, 1926). This is the last temperature above 30 degrees Celsius ever recorded in the country.

Гурахонц is a commune with 3,500 inhabitants in Arad County, an area consisting of several villages and located in the valley of Kryšului Alb, 100 km from Arad. It is first mentioned in documents from the end of the 14th century, and there is also a dendrological park created by the universities of Timisoara and Oradea.

The weather record dates back to the 1970s and is even more impressive because during this period the effects of climate warming were not apparent, and the 1970s also brought the coldest summer months since Romania has complete weather records. Then there were the months of July and August, when the maximum did not exceed 30-32 C, so observing such a “tropical” temperature on March 21 was all the more surprising.

Another proof of how extraordinary this episode was is also the date when the temperature reached 30 C in Gurahonka for the first time in the last nine years (very warm years, 2015-2023). Most often they exceeded 30 degrees in the first decade of June, and in 2023 – only June 21.

In Gurakhonka, the average temperature in March is usually 6-7 C, in the coldest months it is below 3 C, and in the warmest – over 9 C. In the last nine years, the temperature in Gurakhonka did not exceed 26 C in March. The Gurahonț weather station is located at an altitude of 179 m.

30 degrees in March is rare

In the same year 1974, but on March 23, in the Arad village of Minish, a place known for wine, wineries and grapes, it was +30.6°C.

In 1947, Calarasi (+30.8 ºC) and Alexandria +30 ºC were +30 ºC at the end of March. Also on March 30, it was +29.2 ºC in Rosior de Vede, +29.2 ºC in Caracal and +29 °C in Bucharest Beiñas and Craiova, according to ANM data.

The year 1952 brought the highest temperature in the country in the third month of the year with a record of +32.8 C in Odobest. In fact, the end of March 1952 was very hot, the same day on March 30 that the country recorded maximums not exceeded in March: (31.8 °C in Phokshan, 31.5 °C in Basarab, 31.2ºC in Medgidia; 30.6ºC in Sibiu; 30.5ºC in Hryvitz; 30.4ºC in Constanta; 30.1ºC in Cernavoda.

At the end of March 1951, it was +30.2 C in Giurgiu.

On March 31, 1968, it was +30.4 C in Negresti (Vaslui district).

Gurahonț – when it was 30 C for the first time in the last nine years

2015: May 6

2016: June 17

2017: June 4

2018: April 28

2019: June 9

2020: June 7

2021: June 18

2022: June 3

2023: June 21