Excessive moistness

I've mentioned before that the weather in Spain can be quite extreme. Sun, wind and rain can all be just a tad on the over the top side.

Actually I don't mind the sun at all. Here in Alicante province it always gets warm in July and August and the lower temperatures of May, June and September would still be a glorious British summer. In my opinion it's one of the delights of living here but Britons, Spaniards and probably Burundians seem to be constantly surprised that it's warm and several complain about it. True enough it can be destructive and it's not good when it's always sunny and it never rains and the reservoirs empty and the word drought is everywhere.

There's often a breeze in Culebrón, it can be a stiff breeze. We get those dust devils passing by quite frequently in summer - mini tornadoes. Suddenly a breeze springs up from nowhere, slams all the open doors shut, makes the windows rattle, sends dust everywhere and then is gone. But when it does blow it really blows. It actually quite scares me. We have some tall trees. I watch them creak in the wind and I wonder whether the roof would be strong enough to survive a tree toppling onto it.

I don't like the hail either. We get a fair bit of hail. It's something to do with hot air meeting cold air maybe with the sea temperature playing some part in that. I did read it up once but I'm old and I forget and I'm lazy so I'm not going to look again. Sometimes the hailstones are enormous and a few hundred grammes of ice doing 100 kph can do a fair bit of damage to the garden furniture that has survived the sun. And cars. And rooves. A child died this summer from a hailstone strike.

All of these phenomena get reported on the news and nowadays, because someone is always pointing their mobile phone at the right place at the right time, there are videos of tennis ball sized hailstones bouncing off cars, lightning flashes hitting football players and skyscrapers alike and of cars slip sliding in the snow. One of the staples though is floods. Spain has the sort of floods where it rains and rains and rivers overflow and places are flooded and Civil Protection launch rubber boats in the High Street. Much more frequently though we have floods where it rains for ten minutes depositing thousand and thousands of litres in no time at all so that drains can't cope, streets become rivers, stairs and rooves become waterfalls and cars float alongside skips down towards the sea. It looks spectacular on the news. You watch as the water comes gushing out of the windows of somebody's house or as cars float until they pile onto each other. Often a flood that affects one village will be light rain in one a few kilometres away. Microclimates in Spain are as common as tortilla de patatas.

Now we can be pretty smug about this. Those sort of floods are often to do with covering the land with tarmac and concrete. We live surrounded by soil. The road to our house is made of compacted earth. We're on a slope that seems to naturally guide the torrents past our land. Nonetheless the rain can cause problems. It finds the holes in the tin roof of the garage, it comes down the chimneys for the water heater or the cooker hood, it comes under the doors and if you've left a window open then mopping comes next - I lost a computer because the water came in through the open window. But there's a lot of difference between that and people squeegeeing 15cms of mud from their living room floor which is what we see on the telly time after time.

Yesterday we had a bit of a downpour. It lasted maybe 10 minutes. The rain took no notice of the metre overhang of the roof and the 30cm deep window casement and blew into the office so that Maggie had to retreat with her computer. I saw that the back patio was filling with water. I clean the drain every two weeks to make sure it's clear of leaves and stuff but the drain wasn't big enough and the water was soon 15cms deep and threatening to lap over steps and into rooms. I paddled out, took off the drain cover and the fight between water in and out became more equal. It took me a while to dry off though and opening the door to go out was enough to mean a fair bit of mopping up. Then the electric tripped. It turned out to be that the water blowing down the tube for the cooker hood had shorted the circuit. It's still wet enough to still be tripping (same word, different meaning) 24 hours later. But today the sun is shining so it will soon be dry.

And at t least I won't need to water the plants today.

The photo is from Pinoso but years ago. The video isn't from here. It's from all over Spain but it does give the idea.

Into each life some rain must fall

It's raining in Culebrón. This is unusual. It's not unusual in the North of Spain, it rains a lot there, but here in sunny Alicante, well, it's usually sunny. 

It does rain of course. A quick check on a couple of past years and we seem to get about 50 rainy days a year. But that means any rain. The number of days when it rains and rains are few and far between. It's raining now though and it has been for a couple of days. Fortunately, for the local farmers, it's not torrential and there's no hail. Hail is a remarkably common component of the infrequent but heavy storms we get. The number of dimpled cars is testament to that. Big blighters. Balls of ice cracking and smashing down on things. There's thunder and lightning too. The sky alight with lightning is pretty common but the fireworks don't always lead to a downpour. Rain, like everything else in our neck of the woods is very localised. It can be pouring down in Paredón, drizzling in Ubeda yet still dry here.

Our house is miserable when it rains as it is now. All of our external doors lead directly into rooms - there are no hallways - so we traipse the filth from the patios into the kitchen or living room. When the rain comes down in sheets, as it is wont to do at times, the streams gouge suspension breaking channels into the compacted earth of our track. The resultant mud is transported, by wheel arches, to our patio where it combines with the pine needles, leaves, palm fruit and other plant debris to produce a gooey planty mulch through which we have to paddle.

There are Spanish reactions to rain that I still find noticeable. The umbrellas come out. I don't understand how someone wearing shorts and a T shirt can magically produce an umbrella when the rain comes. I don't like umbrellas. Unmanageable brutes that force me to step off the pavement or risk anophthalmia. I'm more of a hooded raincoat person myself which Spaniards must find slightly eccentric given the number of times that I have been offered the loan of an umbrella.

There are like minded Spaniards though. The umbrella-less ones. In towns we hug the walls of the buildings where the overhang from the floors above provides some sort of protection. We walk in single file with the occasional chicken like confrontations of pedestrians headed in opposite directions. Spanish drains don't always cope with the sheer quantity of water so whoever finally gives way can expect sodden shoes and turn-ups.

One compensation though. We're not in Galicia or Asturias, the País Vasco or Huddersfield so it will soon be over. The sun will come out, the sky will be blue and things will be back to normal.