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.

2021 Weather Report for Pinoso

Pinoso has a weather station that forms a part of the AEMET network. AEMET is the Spanish Met Office, Agencia Estatal de Meteorología. So far as I know the weather station for AEMET is in the centre of Pinoso, at the Instituto José Marhuenda Prats. I think it's at the school because the bloke who started it all up taught there though that may be wrong. The man is real enough though, Agapito - always called Cápito - Gonzálvez. He's been Mr Weather in Pinoso for over 30 years now. 

If you haven't seen the AEMET site this link should go directly to the observations over the past few days. Click around the site and you'll find forecasts and a whole lot more.

There is another weather station out at Rodriguillo, which was damaged when the reed beds there went on fire in the summer. Capito got it up and running again within 8 days. There's another another on the Yecla road out of Pinoso. These two stations log their recordings on the Valencian Meteorological Association website - AVAMET. According to that website there's a third station in Pinoso at l'Herrada which, I think, is just off the road from Culebrón to Ubeda. 

If you want to have a look at the Valencia website it's on this link though it does tend to be a bit fickle and constantly change from the Castilian version to the Valencian version. If the site plays up you want Alicante Province and mid Vinalopó or in the Territori section Província d'Alacant and El Medio Vinalopó or el Vinalopó Mitjà. You can choose the date for the records too. The button to change between Castilian and Valencian is at the top right but, as I say, it's all a bit wobbly.

Anyway Capito does these roundups for the monthly weather reports. Again they tend to get published in Valenciano so this is my interpretation of his roundup for 2021. 

During 2021 it rained 68 days and there were 15 days when the temperature fell below freezing. On the other hand there were 128 days of full sun and 163 days with sunny spells as against 52 cloudy days and 22 days with full cloud cover. 

There were 162 days with dew, 22 days with mist and 2 days with hail. There was no snow recorded in 2021. There were storms on 6 days.

The hottest day of the year was the 15th August when it got to 42.5ºC and the coldest day was the 6th January when the temperature dropped to -5ºC. 

The mean high was 23ºC and the mean low was 9.7ºC.

Over the whole year 313 litres of water fell on every square metre of Pinoso and the wettest day of the year was 23rd May when we got 44 of them.

There were 808 hours when the temperature was 7ºC or below but just 60 hours when it was below freezing. Those 60 cold hours being spread between 20 different days. 

There were 80 days when the temperature was greater than 30ºC and 7 days when more than 10 litres of rain fell.

The windiest day was 12th February when it blew at 73km/h

The day when the highest recorded temperature was the lowest of the year (get that?) was 8th January, when it only got to 4.5ºC  and the day when the lowest recorded temperature was the highest was the 12th July when it never dropped below 22.5ºC. 

The overall coldest day of the year was 5th January with a mean temperature was just 2.5ºC, and the opposite was the 15th August when the mean temperature was 31.8ºC.

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.

Microclimates

I've written a diary every day for the last forty six years. For several years now I've put a little footnote to describe the weather - hot and sunny, wet and grey - and, alongside, the maximum and minimum temperatures. I bought a thermometer for the process but, when I lived in La Unión, there was nowhere I could site the thermometer in the shade so I started to use the data from the Spanish equivalent of the Met Office.

The weather, here as everywhere, is a talking point. It's been hot for the past two or three weeks generally in the mid to high thirties. Some parts of Spain have been over forty on occasional days. People often exagerate the weather. They tell me that it was 53ºC in their patio or somesuch so I try to slip into the conversation, gently of course - well, the highest temperature ever recorded in Spain before today has been 47.2ºC in Murcia and, according to the local weather station it only got to 38ºC (or whatever).

But local variations are very noticeable. Spain is the second highest country in Europe and there are mountains all over the place. They affect the microclimate to a remarkable degree. Driving from home in Culebrón to Pinoso just five kilometres away the temperature can rise a couple of degrees whereas Rodriguillo, on the other side of Pinoso towards Fortuna, is often a couple of degrees cooler than Culebrón. Humidity is another startling varaible.

Last year, I think it was last year, hail destroyed rooves, furniture, cars and whatnot in Paredón, another of the villages that encircle Pinoso. In Ubeda, on the same day, the same hail storm but with less intensity smashed the windscreen of a friend's car and put hundreds of little dents into their neighbours car. Just 3km up the road, in Culebrón we got heavy rain but no hail.

Yesterday it rained heavily for the second time this week in Culebrón. When it was over we had large pools all over the garden and I had to mop up in the back bedroom where I'd left a door ajar. I have proof that it rained, I was on the phone to my sister and I made her listen to the noise as the big drops collided with the tin roof.

This morning, when I checked yesterday's temperatures (High 33.6ºC, Low 21.8ºC) I  noticed that the rainfall recorded in Pinoso, where the official weather station is, was zero. In fact none of the weather stations in Valencia, in all three provinces, recorded any rainfall whatsoever.

So was Culebrón the only place it rained yesterday?