In Alicante when it rains...

 ... it POURS! :o( 

Welcome to the meteorological event known locally as the Gota Fría, or "cold drop". It's a weather phenomenon that happens every few years along the Mediterranean coast of Spain, and one that has everyone on edge every year when September morphs into October. Basically it's this huge rain storm... of the kind that drops more water in a couple of hours than we typically get in a whole year! It happens in years when the atmospheric temperatures drop much faster than the sea temperature (i.e. when the air cools down quickly but the sea is still warm). Very humid warm air at the sea's surface rises and cools too quickly when it reaches the cooler layers of the atmosphere, resulting in an intense rainfall accompanied by high winds. In many areas this also results in flashfloods along usually dry riverbeds...

Meteosat's satellite image Friday Sept 28

Bridge on the A-7, image from rtve.es

This year the consequences in Alicante itself weren't too bad since we'd already had an afternoon and a night of "light" rain which moistened the hard ground making it capable of absorbing some of the storm rain. In other years when it hasn't rained before a "gota fría" the ground is so dry and hard it can't absorb any water (acts like concrete!) and the water just rushes along downhill... But in the southern part of the province there was some serious flooding, and in Murcia (100km south of us) a section of the highway (a bridge) fell apart and in some towns homes are destroyed and people dead. So again, we got lucky in Alicante. (Our last really bad one was on Sept 30th 1997, I was "trapped" up on Campus and couldn't get home).

When you watch it all from the safety of home it's quite mesmerising really... I spent a long time just leaning at the window listening to the rain and trying to make out any sign of Alicante or the Mediterranean through the curtain of water.

That and watching the swirling water in the street below us...

It was amazing how, once the storm neared its end, the rain cleared up quite quickly! Just leaving us with signs if run-off in the nearby beach (muddy waters) and gorgeous skies over the castle:

Alicante = Mexico! (from diarioinformacion.com)

The video at the beginning was taken towards the end of the storm (18h40), although it rained for another hour or so it wasn't too bad. It started raining during lunchtime, and as it got worse I thought "so much for poor Ridley Scott and his movie!". Yeah, remember my post last Thursday when I was all excited about that filming sequence downtown? And I was going to go check it out? Well around here if you value your life when one of these storms starts you STAY PUT! So I spent the rest of the afternoon with my parents (had gone over for lunch), alternating between watching the storm and watching TV, before heading home in the evening. But it turns out it takes more than a little rain to stop Ridley Scott! They had the Ayuntamiento all decked out as a Mexican court house and shot some scenes just before the storm hit, filmed the stuff with Michael Fassbender inside while it was pouring down outside, then finished up when the rain ended! I'm sad I missed out, but oh well! If you want to check out a few more pictures and video (and get details if you can read Spanish) here's the article in the local paper.

Oh, and this is what one of our beaches (the Albufereta) looked like on Saturday:

In fact, that happens almost EVERY time we have a big rainstorm (they just keep rebuilding the beach). Why does this beach keep getting destroyed by the storms? Because it's at the mouth of a dry riverbed! Once upon a time (as in when the Romans lived here) this used to be a small bay where a river met the sea, with a Roman harbour and a Roman settlement on a nearby hill. Weather patterns changed, dams were built... the river dried up, the beach formed, and that was that! Except whenever there's a heavy rainstorm (and not just during a Gota Fría) the water finds its way back down the river bed... and during a Gota Fría, well it's much worse! In 1997 this bridge was under water...

We needed rain in Alicante... but not that much all at once! On the plus side for me, we had beautiful skies as a result and Sunday's hike (more on that another day) was absolutely gorgeous!!! ;o)

Alicante Crazy Weather

We had a really freaky weather front roll in through Alicante yesterday morning... and I mean literally rolled in from somewhere inland out to sea. I was sitting at my table in the middle of the day when I suddenly noticed how dark it was and looked up to see this huge black cloud over the Castle. The really cool skies made me reach for my camera to take a couple of shots....

I ended up mesmerized by the advancing storm, watching the opposite coast around the Bay of Alicante gradually disappear into the cloud...

I was shocked by the amount of water running through the storm drain built after a major flood in 1997 (my dad couldn't even get the car out of the garage to come pick me up at the University it was so bad)... but even more surprising was how quickly it all came -in a matter of minutes- and went! 

Less than an hour later the skies were pretty much cleared up and most of the water was gone...

Those are strange storms, but it's the way it usually rains here in Alicante, sudden and strong but short bursts. But when the hard rain goes on for over an hour, then we get floods... (usually in the Fall). People have been complaining about the really wet winter we had this year, but at least it was soft, gentle rain most of the time... good for the soil and the reservoirs. Not this torrential rains that drag everything along with them. It wrecks havoc on some of the beaches as well...

Playa de la Albufereta May 3rd 2010 (from Facebook group)

As I said I was mesmerized by the storm (which turned out to be hail!) and kept fluctuating between my camera and my cell phone for some video. I've put it together in the video below, adding time stamps so you can get an idea how quickly things progressed. I trust you'll recognise the music... seemed an appropriate choice! ;o)
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The rest of Spain got hit pretty badly too... some mountain towns got snowed in again and a few mountain passes required the use of chains.

Beach and satellite photos from the blog Alicante Vivo.

A Mediterranean Oven and the travelling Sahara...

Huh? Travelling Sahara?! Yup! I'll bet you guys didn't know deserts like to travel, eh? ;o)

(photo from National Geographic)

See, they have this nice fine element called SAND (and the sand from the Sahara is a very fine grain) that just loves to get picked up on the wind heading north and go visit other places around the Mediterranean. When it reaches us we call this wind by one of two names: Sirocco or Lebeche. The Sirocco comes in as a southeast wind (from the coast of Algeria for example), very strong, usually ripping it's way across the Mediterranean so charged with humidity and lots of sand (you should see the state of cars parked in the street once it's over!). The Lebeche on the other hand hits Alicante as a southwest wind (there's a better definition on the Spanish wikipedia page). It also starts off in the Sahara (but let's say from Morrocco), but makes its way across the Peninsula, leaving any moisture it may have had stuck behind the mountain ranges it crosses in the form of rain. By the time it reaches us it's hot and very DRY! (this is known as the Foehn effect)

Let me tell you about the weather today. It's hot, damn HOT! So hot I'm having trouble breathing! It's barely past noon and I've already drunk a litre of water!

Here's what the internet says:

35ºC (is 32ºC in the house)
15% humidity

That's what, about 95ºF? Just so you know, the temperature rarely goes over 32ºC here and the humidity in summer is almost always above 70%...

There's a lovely breeze blowing through the apartment, but somehow it just makes things worse!

and then there's this:

the view from the balcony.

Lovely, right? Well the horizon is only supposed to be this crisp in winter! When the humidity is lower than summer. I can't remember the last time I didn't see a hazy horizon in summer!

The wind is coming in from the southwest... so I'm wondering of the Lebeche is paying us a visit... GO AWAY!!! I want to be able to breathe again!

And to think I need to make my way into town this morning to pick up a few things... if it's this hot out here at the Cabo, the center is really going to be a furnace! I'm imagining 40ºC in the parking garage where I'm going to leave the car. Yikes! I think I'll high-tail it to my parents place with some material to work on in a lovely air-conditioned environment! :p