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Even the President of the Tenerife Island Corporation, Ricardo Melchior, says he feels outraged over failures in the National Meteorological Institute (INM)'s predictions for heavy rains last weekend.

The forecast was for storms, heavy rains and floods, when, in reality, hardly a drop fell, but the government had used the INM predictions as a basis for issuing an orange alert - which left us all looking a bit silly.

Melchoir recalled that in March 2006, he had appealed to minister for the Environment, Cristina Narbona, over the scarcity of adequate resources so that the INM could "reasonably predict" the weather in the Canaries. He classifies errors, such as last Friday's or over Tropical Storm Delta in 2005 as "inconceivable". Apparently, the minister then promised adequate resources, but no investment has been made since that date.

We agree, there'll always be uncertainty over weather forecasts, but you do expect something a bit more accurate in the 21st Century.

Apart from the fact that these inaccuracies screw up people's social arrangements when they try to exercise reasonable caution, it's just as important to avoid such false alarms - which lead to "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" situation - as it is dangerous to have no warnings at all.

We'd love to tell you where to find accurate weather forecasts for Tenerife, but if the National Meteorological Institute cant tell us ... May we suggest that for now, you lick your finger and stick it out in the wind? :)

Melchior tilda de "inconcebibles" las predicciones meteorológicas

Labels: Tenerife Weather, Weather

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 Leslie wrote (on February 09, 2008)  

Hello,

The thing is, the weather here in Tenerife is very dynamnic due to the close proximity of mountainous terrain & the ocean. The result is that the local weather conditions are highly dependent on your location + altitude.

Most Canarian people are pretty good at predicting weather on a day-to-day basis.

I have attempted to assimilate some of this basic knowledge here.

Thanks.
-Leslie

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