basketball began to be played in 1891. On the right, the painting by Hendrik Willem Mesdag, “Hiver De 1891 (Au Bord De Mer) or Winter 1891 (by the sea).” title=”On the left, image of the gym where basketball began to be played in 1891. On the right, the painting by Hendrik Willem Mesdag, “Hiver De 1891 (Au Bord De Mer) or Winter 1891 (by the sea).” data-image=”r45agoh5k0s3″ />The withdrawal a few months ago of Pau Gasol, probably the best player in the history of Spanish basketball, was front page news in many media outlets and reminded the general public that, in addition to football, there are other sports.
Surely, dear readers, you are now wondering what “churras con merinos” have to do with it, that is, basketball with the weather, well cheer up, keep reading and you will check how the cold caused the birth of this beautiful sport that so many of us love.
Why basketball and 1891?
In the cold winters of New England, USA, the physical education teacher, James Naismith, he struggled to be able to maintain an indoor activity that would ensure that his young students did not get bored with the monotonous exercises that were done in the gym, since Outside, cold temperatures and snow prevented physical education activities from being carried out..
Coincidentally, In 1891, he devised a ball game, later called basketball, which will motivate their students to carry out the exercises inside the school. It occurred to him to hang some baskets of peaches on the railings of the upper gallery that surrounded the gymnasium and divided his 18 students into two teams of 9 each, which later, in 1896, went to the current number of 5 and that at the beginning of the In the 20th century, the backboard was introduced as a solution to prevent the supporters located in the gallery where the baskets hung from being able to hinder the entry of the ball.
What happened during that winter?
Although in New England they were accustomed to the cold winters, what happened in that year exceeded the records to date and forced, as we have seen above, to the adaptation of certain outdoor activities to the interior, in order to continue with a certain normality. For example, the newspaper “El Día”, published in Madrid on Thursday, January 1, 1891, was echoed in the news of “Foreigner” indicating that on the east coast of the United States and Canada there had been “major maritime disasters and horrific snowstorms […] causing serious damage to coastal shipping”.
According to the reanalyses, in the first days of the year 1891 the northeastern United States had temperatures as low as -20 ºC at about 1500 meters of altitude.
Specifically on January 14, 1891, NOAA reanalysis for that area of North America gave us a temperature of about -20 ºC at 1500 meters of altitude. We can consider that this situation was not only local, since the undulation of the polar jet was very marked, with a powerful blocking Atlantic anticyclone on the surface located to the west of Ireland, which began to channel in Europe, on its eastern flank, a flow from the north with extremely cold air, which on the 14th began its movement towards the southern part of our continent.
Located in Spain, we are going to deal with the final phase of the cold snap of January 1891, which, in turn, is part of an anomalous winter due to the great cold that all of Europe suffered. Since then, nothing similar has been recorded in our country, only in the cold waves of 1956 and last year were similar values measured. That of 1891 was much longer, extending, with certain ups and downs, almost two months, between November 26, 1890 and January 23, 1891, with two very pronounced minimums, one around November 29, 1890 and the other around January 18, 1891.
January 1891, the temperature drops!
We can observe in reanalysis What the mass of air that reached the Peninsula during those days was of arctic origin, with a direct path through Scandinavia, central Europe and entering the Pyrenees on the 15th, with a temperature of -10 ºC at 850 hPa, about 1500 m altitude.
This cold entry, having a very continental route, was quite dry, so its impact was more from the cold than from the snowfall, although they were important in the areas where the air mass at the end of its journey touched the sea, such as in the Cantabrian area or in the large mountain systems in the north of the peninsula.
A storm with retrograde displacement brought a mass of very cold air to the northeast of the peninsula, with temperatures of -16 ºC in the Pyrenees at 1,500 meters of altitude.
The interesting thing about the movement of the pressure centers during the following days was that the Mediterranean storm had a retrograde displacement and approached the Balearic Islands, reaching Corsica and Sardinia on the 17th, which caused the coldest mass, instead of entering through the north of Italy, to be displaced towards the peninsular northeast, with temperatures of -16 ºC in the Pyrenees at 1500 m altitude.
Was the day 18 the peak of this cold wave, with a temperature at 850 hPa of between -18 to -20 ºC, reaching, with -14 ºC the Mediterranean coast, which caused in Valencia a minimum of -8 ºC, the lowest observed in this city. In addition, it would also be necessary to take into account the more than probable force of the wind, due to the proximity of the isobars in the northeast of the peninsula, so the wind chill had to be very low during those days.
Conclusions
The values recorded in that historical cold wave, according to “The Herald of Madrid” on January 19, were from -14 ºC in Reus (Tarragona) and in Teruel and -12 ºC in Morella, Castellón. The official database records of AEMET, referring to the old observatories of provincial capitals, indicate that the lowest minimum of the cold wave was recorded on the 18th with -19.2 ºC in Soria (Institute). Other exceptional values, both because of the drop in mercury and because of the geographical location, were -9.6 ºC in Barcelona (University), -8.0 ºC in Valencia (University), -3.8 ºC in Seville or -0.9 ºC in Malaga.
Visiting the newspaper library we can find many references to the situation experienced in Spain during that historic winter that caused a great impact on society due to what happened, with frozen rivers of greater or lesser size, highlighting the Ebro as it passes through Zaragoza and Tortosa; crops devastated by continuous frost, for example the city of Valencia registered during that winter from 18 to 20 days of frost; people frozen to death while doing farm work or in fishing boats.
The Ebro froze as it passed through Zaragoza and Tortosa. The city of Valencia registered 18 to 20 days of frost that winter.
As we can see, it was a complete disaster and that not only the Iberian Peninsula suffered, but also spread to almost the entire European continent. The Seine River as it passed through Paris remained frozen between January 11 and 24, the Thames at the height of Oxford, the Rhine and so on innumerable cases.
And another blow from Nature was yet to come, since in the last week of January, the break in the situation in the north was abrupt, with the arrival of much more temperate and humid winds, with precipitations that helped to quickly melt the ice, causing great floods, like that of the Ebro as it passes through Zaragoza, with an approximate flow of 3,250 m3/s -compare with the last one in December 2021, which was around 2,700 m3/s-. Similar situations that were experienced in France, Belgium or Germany, to give an example. So it is clear, when we talk about the weather, if we want to talk about cold, we must say “That stops cold, the cold from before!”.
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