Inconsistent

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 to the supermarket but, hey ho, such is life. At the bottom of the pages, for years, I have written a little comment on the weather.

In winter I find inland Alicante very uncomfortable. It can be difficult to keep warm and life can be a bit miserable. If we ever move house buying one we can keep warm in winter will be a priority. But if winter can be hard then I just love summer. The never ending, inescapable, unremitting heat of it and especially the sound the heat makes. Things expanding and contracting. Cigarras singing nonstop. Brilliant. Spring and autumn are good too. Not hot but warm enough.

It's been warm for weeks now. Warm in the sense that a British summer is usually warm or maybe better said that it's not cold. You may occasionally feel a bit chilly, you may have to reach for a big woolly or roll down the sleeves of your shirt, but the gloves and overcoats disappeared weeks or maybe months ago. The outflow of cash on gas bottles has slowed to a trickle. I forget exactly when it was but there's a moment when I quit the electric blanket from the bed  - the blanket that hasn't been used for quite a while but is still in place, just in case. Probably it was the same weekend when the pullovers were folded up and put away ready for next November.

It's probably not been a warm May though and there has been a fair bit of rain. Torrential rain at times. At least that's what people have been saying. "Cool for the time of year", "Will it never stop raining?", "It's usually hot by now," and so on. I'm never sure. People have their own ideas about weather just as they have about Coke and Pepsi. I often think that June is one of the more reliable months with plenty of sun whilst July can be a bit unpredictable but I'm pretty sure that weather service could prove me wrong.

Lunchtime news today and just a short piece to say that May has been, temperature wise, pretty average if a bit wet. They popped a bit on the end to say that the reservoirs were filling up nicely. Strange that, last time I heard it was unlikely we would recover from the drought for years.

Anyway, back at my diary - June 4th 2018, this year - Sunny and pleasant. High 26ºC Low 11ºC. June 4th 2017, last year - Occasional sun, occasional showers, cooler. High 26ºC Low 15ºC.

So last year I thought 26ºC was a bit cool and this year I thought it was pleasant.

Weather report

Cars have thermometers nowadays. Cieza is lower than Culebrón so, as I drive to work, the temperature increases but it's interesting that there are lots of local variations all along the route.

The temperature differences between the villages that surround Pinoso can be quite marked. It's usually one or two degrees colder in Culebrón than in Pinoso for instance. In fact the weather in general can be very different over short distances. Back in 2013 to give an extreme example a hailstorm caused havoc in Paredón. In Culebrón, at the same time, it rained a bit. The distance between the two places is just over 5km.

Pinoso has an official weather station, it's official in the sense that it contributes to the AEMET network with AEMET being the State Meterological Agency. As I understand it this is because a local teacher, always referred to as Capito, started a weather station as a school project which, slowly but surely, became more professional. From time to time I have used the monthly report from that weather station on this blog. At one point the Pinoso weather station stopped reporting to AEMET and I ended up in a bit of correspondence with a local blogger about what had happened. He told me that there was another weather station In Pinoso used by IVIA - the Valencian Institute of Agricultural Research.

Whilst Capito's station is in the centre of Pinoso the IVIA station is on the Yecla road: looking at the map on the IVIA website I'd say that means they are maybe 4km apart. Yesterday AEMET gave the temperature maximum and minimum as 12.9ºC and 1ºC whilst the IVIA site 12.61ºC and 5.05ºC. That's a pretty considerable difference on the minimum temperatures. And it's not just the temperature - all of the data such as wind speed and precipitation also differ, sometimes by significant amounts.

The last time I saw a weather station it consisted of some kit, like thermometers and rain gauges, inside a slatted white painted box. The little picture at the top of this post shows the IVIA station. No slatted box to be seen. I presume that it collects and transmits data automatically to somewhere or other.

One interesting little extra on the IVIA site is that it lists "representative" local crops as artichokes irrigated almonds, celery, aubergines, broccoli, onions, plums, brussel sprouts, cauliflower, asparagus, lettuce, peaches, melon, nectarines, olives to eat and olives for oil, potatoes, cucumbers, peppers, leeks, romanesque salad leaves, watermelons, tomatoes, grapes for eating and for wine and carrots. I would never have guessed that Pinoso was good for brussels.