The Canaries must be prepared for storms like Delta

One of the world's top experts in hurricanes, Cuban-American, Dr. Lixion Ávila, president of the committee on tropical cyclones and tropical meteorology, part of the American Meteorological Society and, longest-tenured senior specialist weather forecaster with the US National Hurricane Center in Miami, has made a "profound" study of the storm, Delta, that hit the Canaries in 2005.

Recently in Madrid for a meeting on subtropical cyclones, organized by the Spanish Meteorological Agency, La Opinión de Tenerife took the opportunity to interview Lixion Ávila (read chapter and verse there, in Spanish.)

The take away is in the headline, in that Ávila says "The Canaries must be prepared for storms like Delta." They happen, sometimes. They aren't a mystery. And, Ávila doesn't put them down to global warming either.

What seems to be at odds with the ability to be prepared (like Boy Scouts) - the article mentions - is the tendency that the local administrations have to "mutism" from the fear that talking openly about it will affect tourism.

Meanwhile, while we're talking about Tenerife weather, yet again, comes the news that the Canaries beat the temperature records in April.

As tourists, that might sound wonderful to you, but in some parts of Tenerife, that early heatwave saw off up to 80% of the potato crops.