May was in 2025 full of rains and colder than the normal of this period, but it can always bring serious summer episodes. 75 years ago, in a village in Bărăgan was the only time in Romania when the temperature passed 40 degrees Celsius in May.
Saharan temperatures in May, in Bărăgan
The maximum absolute temperature of May in Romania was 40.8 ºC, registered in Mărculeşti (Călăraşi county), on May 27, 1950. Mărculești is 14 kilometers from Slobozia and 53 kilometers from Calarasi.
Mărculești is located in the center of Bărăganului and has part of hot summers, cold winters and large temperature differences between night and day (sometimes over 25 degrees Celsius). The excesses are the order of the day when we talk about the continental climate in the Mărculești area, and if on May 27, 1950 there were almost 40 degrees Celsius, in 1991 the maximum was no 10 degrees Celsius in the area (in Calarasi).
The latest frost at the “Marculești agrometeorological station” appeared on May 22, 1952, when there were temperatures below 0 C and in extended areas, in the plains. In the hottest years there was no frost in Mărculești after March 24. The multiannual average of May in Mărculești is +16.3 C, with variations between 14 and 19 C.
Where was it extremely hot on that historic day of May 27, 1950? Slobozia (+39.9 ºC), Zimnicea (+39.1ºC), Grivița and Turnu Măgurele (38.8 ºC), Cernavoda (38.4 ºC), Urziceni (38.2 ºC), Alexandria and Caracal (38 ºC). That day were +36.6 C at the Bucharest Filaret station.
The absolute maximum temperature of May, in Bucharest, was 36.9 ºC, registered at the Bucharest-Băneasa Meteorological Station, on May 13, 1958.
The highest temperatures in the May this century were in 2003, in the first days of the month, when the maximums reached +37.7 C in Slobozia and +37.5 C in Calarasi.
The fifth month of bringing not only many rains, but also huge temperature differences. For example, the average temperature per country in the hottest May, in 2003, was over 19 C. In the coolest month, not even at 11 C did not reach the average (in 1919). May 2025 will certainly be much colder than the average, when the data from the weather stations in the country will be centralized.
Why is it so hot sometimes? Because there can also be very hot, tropical “advects”, which can generate strong temperature increases, registering the first cases with heat waves of the year.
Mechanics, tractors, rich harvests – the fame of the place during the communist period
Mărculești commune was known for the “Agricultural Research and Development Station”, based in Perişoru commune, Călăraşi county. The resort also exists in 2025.
The communist press of the time wrote about the “Experimental Agricultural Station Mărculești”, about mechanics, tractors, about irrigation systems, about “socialist race”, about brigades, lifting production and increasing the amount of feed cow. The reports with the pathos were not missing about “rich harvests”, articles on the platform Arcanum, which digitized tens of millions of articles in the Romanian press have been digitized in the last two centuries.
In 1959, the Dobrogrea Nouă publication wrote that the Marculești resort was 30 years of activity. Another article in Dobrogea Nouă, in 1958, had the title: “A new advantage of the socialist competition in the Mărculești agricultural experimental resort” and spoke in it about the Trienal Plan for Development of Agricultures in the Constanța region.
You are marking in a few weather data:
- Highest temperature: +41 C in August 1951
- Lowest temperature: -28.5 C in January 1938
- The hottest Moon May: 1929 with an average of +18.9 C
- The coolest May Moon: +13.8 C in 1940
- The driest May: In 1947, with only 7.4 l/sqm
- The rainy May Moon: in 1943, with 178 l/sqm (three times above the monthly average E 57 l/sqm)
The data are for the three decades between 1926 and 1955. The difference between the most drought and rainy year is huge: 317 l/sqm vs 1.048 l/sqm. The data are from the volume Climate RSR Vol II.
Photo source: dreamstime.com
