Spring Sunshine Break
After the chilly end to March some of us may not want to wait for another few months to experience an English summer and be wanting to escape to warmer climes further south where summer like warmth and sunshine is- if not guaranteed -at least an odds on chance.
So where should you think about heading? People do often expect that it will be warmer in the south of Europe earlier than it actually is especially warm. The two key things to consider are your proposed location: inland or by the sea and the strength of the sun. Certainly the sun may be very strong at locations below about 40N by mid April. You can get burnt in the sun in fact even in winter time along the southern Spanish coast and islands like Malta and Crete. So if the sun is out it will be strong. However out of the sun and at night it may be quite cold. This is because the diurnal range inland can be very high in Spring, due to the air being very dry; this is especially the case inland across the Iberian Peninsula and southern Balkans. Low humidities allow the air to re-radiate any heat gained during the daylight hours very quickly at night and because by day the moisture trapped in the air is at a very low temperature in contact with your skin it will feel chilly if the sun isn't warming it up.
The other factor that many will be familiar with from days spent at UK coastal resorts in the late Spring when the wind is coming off the sea, is that there is a significant lag factor with surface sea temperatures across the Mediterranean and Western Atlantic. They are at their coolest in March and April and only start warming up after about mid April onwards. For example if you visit Barcelona in early April with an onshore breeze off the relatively cold Med -still at about 13C it will feel notably chilly! The locals still like to walk around in thick coats on such days and will view your shorts and t-shirt attire with some disdain!
Further south though, along the Costa del Sol for example, the sea is a lot warmer all year round and so you should find that it will take cloud and rain to really bring the temperature down and even with a breeze coming off the sea it will still be fairly pleasant. Islands though like Rhodes, Crete and Malta will still have a maritime climate influenced by the sea throughout the Spring period and there can be periods when cold air moves south from the Alps or Balkans and brings unsettled weather with some sharp showers by day, the temperature then dropping noticeably.
Inland across Greece and the Balkans it can be warm but the very best place in mid Spring to be is actually inland in southern Spain. Places like Seville, Cordoba and Granada warm up the earliest without the likelihood of the cold plunges often experienced further east. Cordoba sees an average of 9 hours sunshine a day and a maximum temperature of 22C in April. Malaga however also sees similar high temperatures (around 23C by day in April) but can be a little more unseasonable at times, if the flow is southerly, off the sea, which is about 17-18C by then, so it's a bit more of a risk. This is what keeps the average maximum temperatures in Malta and Crete down to about 18C by day still in April.
