Subscribe in a reader
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Tenerife prepares to cope with winter rains
Canarias24horas alerted us to the possibility that, on Sunday, we may have to "sacar el chubasquero" (get out the raincoat/showercoat) as the anticyclone that was preventing cool air from coming in from the north (on the Trade Winds), is finally going away.
On Friday, we noted that the temperature here indoors "dropped sharply" from a too warm for the time of year, 26 degrees to a "chilly" 22 degrees - CENTIGRADE, of course - and realized "winter" had arrived when that "infallible barometer of atmospheric conditions" (four cats) huddled together on the "lecky blankie" for the first time this winter. :)
Hot and cold, winter and summer, are decidedly relative terms here.
Anyhow, Sunday, they tell us, there will be cloudy intervals in La Palma and El Hierro, becoming cloudy to very cloudy over all the western Canary Islands. Temperatures will rise slightly, initially. Winds will be moderate to strong on high ground. On Monday/Tuesday more of the same, basically, with a slight drop in temperatures.
Que llueva...que llueva... | Get the latest Tenerife weather here ...
All joking aside, we desperately need the rain. I was absolutely stunned by this image of this valley, taken at the beginning of this month.
Look how brown everything is! Now look at this, this or this image (two spring and one autumn) for how green and fertile it used to be.
There is, apart from "climate change" and (associated, or not) lack of rain, a major reason for the browning of this valley: the abandonment of the land. There were already very few, but over the last 8 years, there appear less and less smallholders trundling up and down these lanes to tend to their plots. Nobody wants to be bothered with growing things any more, either they don't need to do it for subsistence, or it isn't profitable.
Unpredictable weather patterns mean that crop failures are becoming more frequent. (The rest of the world could do with taking heed of what's happening on this island: often called "a continent in miniature".)
And, as one neighbour told me, it costs more to buy seed potatoes to plant, for instance, than it does to buy sacks of imported spuds to eat.
Who wants to pay more and have the hard work? 
Then, because everything is becoming more and more abandoned, the valley has become a "rat sanctuary" (I kid you not and they're the size of cats), which has meant more use of chemicals, more weed killers, more browning ...
The landscape here is always browner after the summer, but this year, we hardly had a summer, yet, I have never seen it looking so brown before.
What concerns me more is that, should - heaven forbid - we ever be confronted with another fire and this time the wind not "miraculously" change direction, this brown stuff (it's dead weed and brush, not clean earth) would burn faster than spontaneous combustion.
In the meantime, erosion, after the fire burnt off ground cover, has added to the risk of winter rains causing avalanches of ash and soil. In October, environmental councilor, Wladimiro Rodríguez, recognized that the areas affected by the fire were not prepared for the coming winter rains.
The Cabildo says the island has 5,700 kilometers of barrancos (gorges), where there are risks of flooding, the worst are in Santa Cruz, La Laguna, Arona and Adeje, followed by Candelaria, Güímar and Los Realejos.
There is a plan, however, and to be fair, the island of Tenerife will be one of very few places on earth to have such protection, once / if it's actioned.
The new Plan de Defensa (Defence Plan) is to prepare the island to confront heavy rains. After several years of work, the text is all written and it's expected that the island's water board will be the first to sign it on Monday, but it's going to take 8 years and 113 million euros (£75M) to fix the 547 risks that have been identified, the majority of which are "grave" and need an "urgent" solution to prevent flooding on the island.
Most of those are because someone's built something, like roads or buildings, or are farming, in the path that rain water wants to take.
The next step, says the report, is getting all the parties (Canarian Government, Island Council, Water Board, Town Halls and individuals), to come to agreement (and cough up the dough), though the Island Council has made it clear that carrying out the plan is obligatory.
Until then, we have to cross our fingers and hope that the rains we get are moderate and not of the kind that can bring devastating floods.
La Isla necesita 113 millones para enfrentarse a las lluvias
Labels: Tenerife Weather, Weather
