Life in Culebrón

The local Medios de Counicación recently published Capito's analysis of the annual data from the weather station in Pinoso for 2024. It's in Valenciano, so I may have got some things wrong. I missed out a couple of details on purpose. I may have missed others by mistake.  Capi Gonzálvez Poveda, Capito, taught in Pinoso for years and he still runs the local weather stations one of which forms part of the AEMET, the National Weather Service's, network. So, the maximum temperature was 41°C on 3 July, and the minimum was -2.5°C on 21 December.  We received 256 litres of rain during the year,  the rainiest day was 11 June, with 41 litres.  The windiest day was 8 June, when the wind blew at 75 km/h.  The day with the highest minimum temperature was 16 July, when the temperature didn't drop below 23°C.  The day with the lowest maximum temperature was 11 December, when the temperature didn't exceed 9.5°C. There was rain on 55 days, it dropped below freezing on 20 d...

I'm a bit of a softy weatherwise. We get  a lot of extreme weather here  and I don't like it. Well, I don't like most of the extremes. When the sun's beating down in June, July and August that's an extreme I can be doing with. I don't like it though when the wind blows hard. I expect the garden chairs, or something else not firmly anchored, to smash into my parked car. I can visualise the pine trees outside the house toppling over and taking down the roof of the house. I don't like it when it hails. Again I worry about the motor. Cars with hundreds of little craters, in the skyward facing bodywork, are commonplace around here. I don't like it when it rains hard. I am quite sure the drain in the back patio will block and that water will flood into our living room and even if that doesn't happen it's a certainty that the water will gouge deep channels into the track outside our house. I don't like it when the temperature drops either and our...

I have a pal, Carlos, who has one book published and a second well under way. Carlos is obviously driven to write. I think he's pretty good. There's a bit of a tendency to too many trade marks and too many adjectives along the lines of  "He moved forward. His Doc Savage jaw and aquiline nose crossed the threshold of the door in a dead heat and just in time to see the pneumatic blonde kick off her black Jimmy Choo Aimee pumps, flick open her ancient IMCO and gently scorch the end of the pink Sobranie Cocktail clamped between her glossy red lips." He can be a bit repetitive too (then again Dickens has scrooge eat dinner twice) but the story lines and plot development are good. If you read Spanish then give it a go and help to make him rich and famous - El Legado del Mal by Carlos Dosel. I have no ambitions to write, other than for my own amusement. I also keep a diary. I have for years. Most of it is along the style of I got up and went to get a coffee before going ...

I seem to have lost the Pinoso weather station and, like my mini loud speaker, I can't find it. The state weather service here is called AEMET, La Agencia Estatal de Meteorología. The service uses all sorts of mechanisms, including data collected from a series of traditional weather stations dotted around Spain, to build up its records and to make weather predictions. One of the weather stations is, or at least was, in Pinoso. From what I can make out this is because a local teacher, whose nickname is Capito, started to collect basic weather information as a classroom project. With time the project, and the equipment, developed to the point when his data formed a part of the AEMET network. There was an event in February 2015 to celebrate 25 years of Capito's weather recording in Pinoso. I check the website on an almost daily basis but, for the past few weeks, the Pinoso data has been missing. I presumed it was a technical problem. Then, a couple of days ago the Pinoso n...

The average maximum daytime temperature in Pinoso during June was 29.2ºC and the average low was 13.7ºC. There was a tie for hottest day with both the 28th and 30th coming in at 37ºC and we had eleven days when the temperature was over 30ºC. The coldest day was on the 7th when we got down as low as 9.5ºC. We had nineteen days with sunny clear blue skies, eight with with sunny spells and three cloudy. It rained four days and we had thunder and lightning twice. Overall we got 53 litres per square metre of rainfall but 30 of those litres fell on one day, on the 13th.

Only a little while ago one of the chief weather forecasters from the state TV broadcaster came to Pinoso to celebrate the 25 years of weather data collection in the town. She was here to praise the efforts of a local chap called Agapito Gonzálvez better known as Cápito. Because of him Pinoso, which is no more than a village really, has a weather station that provides data for the Spanish equivalent of the Met Office - AEMET or Agencia Estatal de Meteorología . Each month the Town Hall publishes Cápito's summary of the previous month's weather. Here is my summary of his summary. In May we got eighteen days of sunny and cloudless skies and another twelve with sunny spells  - that leaves just one sunless and cloudy day. The highest temperature, of 38ºC, was recorded on the 14th of May - that was one of the seven days when the temperature got above 30ºC. The lowest temperature was 5ºC on the 23rd May which was one of the five days when temperatures dropped below 7ºC. The mea...

It's just four kilometres from Pinoso to Culebrón but despite that the weather can be significantly different. Not significant in the sense of Vladivostok to Kingston but a couple of degrees, rainy or dry, windy or breezy. La Agencia Estatal de Meteorología (AEMET) is the equivalent of the Met Office - it supplies meteorological services to the state and to the armed forces. I presume Pinoso has a little weather station somewhere because the town features in the list of official daily weather reports. There's no AEMET presence in Culebrón so readings from Pinoso will have to do. I notice in the blurb for these figures that a chap, Agapito Gonzálvez is credited with the data. He may just have compiled the information or maybe he's a local meteorological version of Patrick Moore; an amateur with standing. Anyway. During last year 214 litres of water fell on every square metre or for those of you raised on inches of rainfall a bit under 9 inches all year. The highest tem...