ClimavisoStorms in Asturias: the western coast gets less than half the warnings of the Picos de Europa
Published 11 October 2026 · Climaviso
Asturias has five warning zones, and storms don't fall evenly among them. From 2019 to 2025, the western coast (Avilés, Luarca, Navia) had 42 days with a storm warning. The mountains of the Cordillera and Picos de Europa (Cangas de Onís, Arriondas, Infiesto), 111.
The five zones, from most storms to fewest
| Zone | Towns | Storm-warning days, 2019–2025 | Of which orange | Yearly average |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cordillera y Picos de Europa | Cangas de Onís, Arriondas, Infiesto | 111 | 8 | 16 |
| Suroccidental asturiana | Cangas del Narcea, Tineo | 104 | 10 | 15 |
| Central y Valles Mineros | Oviedo, Siero, Langreo, Mieres | 73 | 6 | 10 |
| Litoral oriental asturiano | Villaviciosa, Llanes, Ribadesella | 48 | 3 | 7 |
| Litoral occidental asturiano | Avilés, Navia, Pravia, Luarca | 42 | 2 | 6 |
A day with a storm warning counts once, even if several warnings were issued that day. No zone in Asturias had a red storm warning in those seven years.
The mountains get more than two and a half times as many storm warnings as the western coast. That's the usual pattern of summer storms, which form more inland and over the ranges than by the sea. The eastern coast and the central zone sit in between.
The same rules across Asturias
The comparison is fair: storm warnings don't depend on a different threshold in each zone. Yellow is for strong storms (lots of lightning, locally heavy rain, very strong gusts or hail over 1 cm) and orange for very strong ones (gusts over 90 km/h or hail over 2 cm), everywhere in Spain.
June, the storm month
In all five zones, June has the most storm warnings: 164 of the region's 378 warning days, 43%. The season runs from May to September. From October to February there wasn't a single storm-warning day in Asturias in those seven years.
| Zone | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cordillera y Picos de Europa | 2 | 4 | 17 | 49 | 14 | 12 | 13 |
| Suroccidental | 4 | 6 | 17 | 44 | 10 | 9 | 14 |
| Central y Valles Mineros | 1 | 3 | 13 | 36 | 8 | 5 | 7 |
| Eastern coast | 1 | 0 | 7 | 17 | 9 | 6 | 8 |
| Western coast | 0 | 0 | 7 | 18 | 4 | 3 | 10 |
Storm-warning days in each month, 2019 to 2025 combined.
Year by year, and 2026
| Zone | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026* |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cordillera y Picos de Europa | 11 | 18 | 14 | 18 | 18 | 10 | 22 | 35 |
| Suroccidental | 8 | 21 | 17 | 17 | 15 | 8 | 18 | 34 |
| Central y Valles Mineros | 7 | 11 | 11 | 13 | 10 | 3 | 18 | 22 |
| Eastern coast | 6 | 9 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 16 | 17 |
| Western coast | 4 | 11 | 3 | 4 | 9 | 2 | 9 | 15 |
*2026, up to 11 October.
2026 already has the most storm-warning days on record in all five zones of Asturias, with almost three months to go, although October to February usually has none. In the Cordillera y Picos de Europa it's 35 so far, against the previous high of 22, in 2025.
Not just storms
Counting every type of warning, the gap is even wider. From 2019 to 2025, the Cordillera y Picos de Europa had 483 days with some warning; the western coast, 151, one of the four lowest counts in Spain. That zone and A Mariña (Lugo) are also the only two in Spain without a single heat warning in those seven years.
A warning doesn't say where lightning will strike
A storm warning is issued for the whole zone: it says strong storms are expected somewhere in it, not that they will pass over every town. And it's a forecast, not a record of lightning or damage. What these numbers show is how often people in each zone have had to keep an eye on the sky.
To see your town's warnings day by day since 2018, look it up on the map or browse the towns of Asturias.
Sources
- Warnings: AEMET's warning archive (CAP format, AEMET OpenData), collected by Climaviso since June 2018.
- Storm-warning criteria: AEMET, Meteoalerta plan, annex 1 (31 May 2022, Spanish).
Towns in this article
A warning is not damage; a zone is not a building.