Friday, November 28, 2008

Is the weather really that good?

The weather in Tenerife is what most people want to know about, so quoting from Leslie Beeson's book, Tenerife Lifeline, "Spain's National Statistics Institute has revealed that the Canary Islands are the only part of Spain to have a genuine year-round warm season and that Tenerife was the star performer, with the highest average temperature (21.8 degrees centigrade) and the most sunshine too (nearly 3,565 hours in the year, or almost ten hours every day)."

Never mind the temperature, see the sunshine ...

From the above, it should be easy to deduce that, if you visit Tenerife in winter, not only are you going to feel pretty warm compared to any northern European climate, you'll also enjoy a lot more sunshine each day.

The length of the day is really quite noticeably different. Being much nearer the equator, although there was little difference in the time of sunrise - 7:37 AM in Tenerife and 7:39 AM in the UK - when it comes to the time of sunset, there's a world of difference.

Gloomy night drew in at 3:59 PM in Britain, on November 27th (and it will be even earlier by Christmas), while in Tenerife it stayed daylight for more than another 2 hours, until 6:10 PM, keeping temperatures up longer too.

When it comes to those temperatures, what you really want to know is how much warmer will it be than it is at home? This diagram of the average highs (daytime) and lows (nighttime) temperatures in Tenerife, compares them to those in London.

Another comparison, at around 4.30 p.m. on November 27th, the temperature at the airport on the south of Tenerife was a reportedly (courtesy of Weather Underground) a quite "chilly" (by Tenerife standards) 68 °F / 20 °C.

Meanwhile, at the same time, in London, UK, it was a quite warm for the time of year (only because, once again, it was persisting down), 52 °F / 11 °C.

Those 9°C degrees of difference may not seem like much, but it's the difference between needing an overcoat, scarf, hat, gloves and galoshes ... and maybe (only maybe, mind) needing a cardigan, only at night.