Weather on Tenerife – Another Storm Warning for Tenerife

Just when we thought it was all over, we get another storm warning for high winds. The worst were due to be at high altitudes, but gusts of 80 kph were forecast for the coast.

Whilst we tweeted about gloriously hot weather all week and oodles of sunshine, to scepticism from certain southern quarters who shall remain nameless, we waited for the inclement weather to hit, reading reports of rain in various parts of the island.

Well the inclement weather hit last night in the form of a loud howling wind which made sleep a bit of a fantasy. In truth the gusts were nowhere as strong as February’s, but what they lacked in strength, they made up for in noise aided and abetted by the cat’s accompanying wailing – ‘let me innnnnn, let me innnnnnn…’

Because of the direction the wind was coming from (SW) it was also hot and the sky was crystal clear showing a busy sea of sparkling stars. If I hadn’t been so knackered I might have appreciated their beauty a bit more at 4am.

This morning we woke to sunshine again, the lightest of April showers despite there being hardly any clouds (although to the west we could see some quite angry formations lingering), a rainbow arcing from Los Realejos to the sea and fresh snow on Teide.

And for all those doubters out there, here are the photos to prove that it is still sunny in Puerto de la Cruz.

Now if only I could find that pot of gold...

April and more snow on Teide

Storms on Tenerife – After the Rains, Floods, Winds & Lightning 2010

Yesterday we had quite persistent rain in Puerto de la Cruz. I mention this because it shows the contrary nature of the weather on Tenerife.

A lot of people out there will be aware that the island has been battered by a pretty serious storm this week. The irony is that whilst we read reports and watched TV footage of ravines being turned into raging torrents; houses being flooded; cars being swept away; roads strewn with debris and beaches in some of the southern resorts being partly washed away, in Puerto de la Cruz we had a few showers and there was hardly a breath of wind. On this occasion Mount Teide protected the northern coast from the worst of the weather – most of the rain was dumped on the south, west and east sides of the island.

Then the weather forecasters announced the storm had moved away yesterday… and it started to chuck it down here. It served me right. When someone I was due to meet on Wednesday in Puerto sent a text on Tuesday to say that they didn’t think they’d make the journey because of the atrocious weather, I smugly replied ‘but it’s lovely and sunny over this side’.

Those of us who know the island well and know its history understand that, although it is almost the most perfect climate all over the island, Tenerife does experience the occasional extreme of weather and has done throughout its documented history.

The world’s inclement weather doesn’t stop at Tenerife’s coastline and say ‘Oh that’s Tenerife – its perfect weather there don’t you know, we can’t spoil that’.

However, some people act as though that this is the case. Blizzards and below freezing temperatures have created a mini ice age over much of Europe this winter, but some think that the world’s weather has no impact on Tenerife’s. I’ve noticed people on some travel forums saying things like ‘rain – I thought Tenerife was supposed to have a perfect climate.’ As though they’d been lied to.

I understand that people coming on holiday have concerns about weather, especially the British who seem to suffer more than most when it comes to crap weather at home, but if Tenerife had unbroken sunshine for 365 days the whole place would be a desert. Some of it is. As it happens it doesn’t rain much – anywhere on the island – but it does rain, especially in November and February. Remember that when people referred to Tenerife as having a perfect climate, they weren’t originally meaning for lying on a beach for two weeks (although it is a hard place to beat for that as well), they were talking about living – and that includes the farmers.

The other curious thing I noticed on Tripadvisor was how some people reacted to being told about the storm and weather warnings. On two occasions detailed posts about what were happening were almost completely ignored, the next posters asking ‘so can anyone tell me what’s the weather like now?’

What this really meant was ‘I don’t want to hear this; I want someone to tell me that it’s going to be sunny.’

One person even went as far as to search weather forecasts until they found one which had clearly got it all wrong by forecasting that it was going to be sunny when ‘serious’ forecasts were warning ‘batten down the hatches’. The fact that it was wrong mattered less than the fact that it showed exactly what they wanted to see.

Like I said, I understand visitors’ concerns. When I’m going to a place where I’m hoping for wall to wall sunshine, I don’t want rain and storms, but sometimes I get them – the weather is the weather.

The wonderful thing about Tenerife is that bad weather rarely lasts very long. Within 48 hours of the weather warning being issued the sun was shining in the south again. That’s the reality of weather on Tenerife.

And this morning we woke in Puerto de la Cruz to clear blue skies and this magnificent vision.  Like they say, every rain filled cloud has a silver lining.

Closing the Crater – plans to limit the number of cars into Teide National Park

Going slow in the snow

Although Sunday in Las Cañadas del Teide was an unforgettable experience, the stretch between El Portillo and the cable car did involve crawling along in a barely moving queue of traffic. Although the snow’s transformation of the normally ‘other worldly’ landscape did provide a distraction to being gridlocked, it was still a tad tiresome. I suspect Tenerife Cabildo president, Ricardo Melchior might have been sitting in the same queue.

Wednesday saw a news report that the island’s president wanted access to the park limited to 3,000 cars. The reasons for this seem sound. He was concerned about the potential danger that the influx of vehicles to the park when it snows could cause. He had a point, if an ambulance, or emergency vehicle had to get through Teide National Park on Sunday, the person, or persons it was on its way to help would have been, to put it mildly, buggered.

The worry I have about this proposal to limit entry to the park is HOW. Let’s face it, when it comes to the planning and organisation section of Tenerife’s annual report card , the entry never changes; it’s perpetually marked in bold red letters ‘could do much better’.

I have this vision of barriers being put up across the four roads leading to the crater and when it snows, the usual tens of thousands of cars head uphill to be blocked off at the pass. Inside the park the roads are quiet and a few thousand families frolic in the snow in relative exclusivity.

At the barriers however, there’s chaos. Queues stretch back for miles on both sides of the road; cars attempting three point turns cause complete havoc; an ambulance trying to take some poor kid who’s just broken their leg snowboarding can’t escape the park; at the barrier itself two rangers are staring in bemusement at the mess and one turns to the other and says:

“Ah…we didn’t think about what would happen on the roads outside the park?”
“Somebody better tell the president,” the other replies.
“Well I’m not doing it, you can,” the first grumbles. “And I don’t think he’ll be happy if you phone him on a Sunday.”
“Don’t worry, I don’t have to phone him,” the first ranger smiles and points to a family laughing and playing in the snow. “He’s over there building a snowman.”

Sunday on Tenerife – From rising snow lines to plunging necklines

Whatever happened to lazy Sunday afternoon? There hardly seemed a second yesterday when we weren’t rushing from one place to the next. Actually rushing anywhere on a Sunday is clearly an inaccurate statement as the Tinerfeños take to the roads by the town load and despite what anyone will try to tell you about locals driving like madmen on the roads (motorways apart), on the country roads most drive at the pace of a snail…with a bad limp.

Is this really Tenerife?

First stop was Las Cañadas del Teide to see what last week’s snowfall had done to the lunar landscape. It turned out that everyone else (well everyone who wasn’t escaping cold, grim snow covered northern Europe for Tenerife’s beaches) had the same idea.

It was party time in the crater and the road was full of locals parking wherever there was a hint of a space, irrespective of how much their car was blocking the road, turning the crater road into a single lane affair. Huge picnics were unpacked from the back of 4x4s as well as body boards, inflatable beds, sun visors and black plastic bags…anything in fact that could be turned into a makeshift sled. Sledging down a mountain probably isn’t an activity most people would associate with Tenerife.

We would have stayed longer except that the mighty diablos rojos were playing at 16.00, so our trip to winter wonderland was cut short and we headed back down through scenery that seemed more Alpine-esque than Canarian to watch Giggsy roll back the years and score an absolute corker of a goal which sent us back to the top of the Premiership.

Gladrags, but no handbags in 'glamorous' Puerto de la Cruz

We barely had time to get home and make and eat dinner before we headed back into town to watch the presentation of the candidates for this year’s Carnaval Queen beauty contest. The theme for the Puerto de la Cruz Carnaval this year is ‘Africa, Land of Tribes’ and after an opener of some authentic African dancing the show strayed into ‘Black and White Minstrels’ territory (it was always on the cards) before the candidates for infant Carnaval Queen and then the adults were ‘exposed’.

The adult girl’s dresses ranged from the exquisitely elegant to the borderline trampy (okay I’m being generous here…the dress had crossed the border and was deep into red light territory); there were creations where necklines plunged to almost meet hemlines; there were backless numbers…God, there were even nearly frontless ones. It will come as no surprise when I tell you that it was a well attended event. Luckily for the girls the weather was kind to them. Had the event been held last week, there would have been an impressive display of goose pimples on show, but it was a beautifully mild night, so no quivering bosoms (damn).

We didn’t stay till the end; these events can drag on a bit, but the one and a half hours we did stay was a reminder that the organised Carnaval events involve a hell of a lot of standing around. The fact that my legs were aching and my back was stiff after a relatively short time also told me something…Carnaval is less than two weeks away and I’m nowhere near match fit.

The Weather on Tenerife – Christmas and New Year 2009

Mount Teide on Christmas Day - A White Christmas with Blue Skies in the north

Anyone who’s been following TripAdvisor or the Tenerife Forum (not to be confused with The Tenerife Forum) over the festive season will no doubt be under the impression that the weather in Tenerife has been pretty poor over the festive season with cool cloudy days and even some torrential rain which caused havoc on streets which weren’t built with flash flooding in mind.
Sitting here in my house in the allegedly ‘cool and cloudy’ north of Tenerife, I’ve followed threads on community forum websites with interest, especially considering that for the last two weeks (since my last post) we’ve had beautiful sunny days and temperate nights here in Puerto de la Cruz in the La Orotava Valley (apart from Tuesday 30th December when it chucked it down all day).

It’s been an absolutely wonderful Christmas, weather wise and I’m really pleased for all the many nationalities that chose the north of Tenerife as a destination to celebrate their Christmas.
This year the south got unlucky and I feel it for people who were looking for a warm escape from their dreary northern European winter, but it might make the people who always dismiss the north as being cool, rainy and cloudy in winter think again.

They say that there are only two things in life which are certain…and the weather isn’t one of them.

Where’s the Sun?

I realise that if you’re wrapped up in blankets freezing your proverbials off, you’re unlikely to have much sympathy when I moan that the weather here on Tenerife has been pretty crap over the last couple of weeks.

Of course being Tenerife, what that actually means is that the sun has showed its face most days, but not for long enough to strip down to the swimming cossie and get prone on the sand.

This ain’t normally an issue for us, the luxury of sunbathing is something that we tend to do only when we have sun starved and peelly wally northern British friends and family visiting. However, this week my mother, a fully paid up member of the sun worshipper’s club, came to stay, so plenty of visits to Tenerife’s beaches had been planned. The weather in Puerto hadn’t been great; the November rains had arrived early and my mum’s first night was spent listening to a monsoon bouncing off the roof with such force that it made sleeping difficult.
Pointing out that “it’s good for the farmers and the garden” and “This is really unlucky, the rain doesn’t normally arrive until later in November” doesn’t really cut the mustard with someone who’s experienced yet another disappointing and almost non-existent summer in the UK.

Still, no worries, this is Tenerife where the sun’s always shining somewhere. A search of web cams and Tenerife forums told us that the south of the island was not only experiencing windy weather, but that it was cold as well, so that was out.

The only really sunny day of my mum's holiday

We decided that the safest bet was the ‘magic tunnel’ at Buenavista where you enter one side in doom and gloom weather and emerge beneath blue skies on the other, but this time the tunnel let us down. The skies weren’t quite as grey on the other side of the tunnel, but they certainly weren’t blue. However, by the time we reached the lighthouse, the sun seemed to be fighting its way through the clouds and we decided to risk it and lay out our towels on the pebble beach. Ten minutes later we were sprinting back to the car as a massive rain cloud snuck up on us from behind the Teno Mountains and unloaded its wet cargo. This was to set the pattern for the week. Apart from one beautiful day on Playa Jardín in Puerto de la Cruz, overlooked by Mount Teide who looked splendid wearing its first snow overcoat of the year, the cloud hung around like a bad smell for the duration of my mum’s visit.

Las Teresitas, shortly before the heavens opened

One day we tried Las Teresitas outside of Santa Cruz and at least got a couple of hour’s sunshine before, returning from a beach hut with lunch (T5 does great lomo bocadillos), we noticed a battleship grey cloud appear over the Anagas.
“Do you think that looks like a rain cloud?” Andy asked, looking skywards.
She’d hardly finished the question before some heavenly body upended a bucket of water over the whole beach and suddenly Las Teresitas resembled that scene from JAWS with everyone running up the beach screaming (my mum losing her spectacles in the process).

Another day we tried Playa San Juan and Playa de la Arena on the south west coast, the area with the best weather (if you’re after sunshine) on Tenerife. An hour plus drive from one cloudy coast to find…another cloudy coast, but at least it was warm.

And so it went on.

My mum returned to Scotland on Thursday night, the weather staying moody to the end; a chilly wind was blowing through the airport. Despite her insistence that the weather had been ‘fine’, she must have been disappointed. For those of us who live here it doesn’t matter; the rain is essential for many people’s livelihoods and we know that in a few days the sun will be shining again. But if your holiday happens to coincide with the coming of the November rains, then it’s a bit of a bummer.

To rub salt into the wounds, we woke up on Friday morning to blue skies and warm sunshine and it’s pretty much stayed that way since. Life’s a bitch, eh?

The Party’s Over…For Now

At last, the festive celebrations are over on Tenerife and I can take stock on whether this year was more ‘bah humbug’, or ‘full of Christmas Cheer’.

Christmas Eve (day)
First blood to Spain’s post office service, Correos. They completely outmanoeuvred me by closing for the whole of Christmas Eve without any prior notice. I joined an equally bewildered and bordering on mutinous mob of ‘Canarios’ outside the Correos offices looking for signs, anything that would tell us what was going on.
The only source of information was an elderly Canarian woman on a balcony beside the office who proved a more useful source that the Correos by warning us that they were planning to do the same on New Years Eve. As I have an apartado (postbox) in the Correos, this unexpected situation meant no ‘pressies’ on Christmas Day (Humbug).
Nochebuena (Christmas Eve)
We decided to console ourselves by going into Puerto de la Cruz knowing that:
A) We’d never get a bus so it would be a three kilometre walk into town.
B) As Canarios celebrate Nochebuena at home with the family, the town would be dead and the only chance for a shindig would be a Brit bar where Scandinavians, Belgians, Germans and British congregate to drink too much, wear silly hats and sing-along to music that was already twenty years out of date when I was a teenager. (An, almost embarrassed, Christmas Cheer)

Christmas Day
No presents to open, so we made some bucks fizz, stuck on ‘Faithless’ at full blast and spent the day cooking a pavito (little turkey). Amazingly, it’s the first Christmas that we’d spent on our own in twenty years. We had a lovely day. Ate too much; drank too much and spent the evening watching ‘Blood Diamond’, an episode of the second series of Rome (the one pressie which had gotten through the Correos’ blockade) and snacking on turkey bocadillos and chipolatas without the stress of having to keep one eye on Andy’s stepmother who’s a snack fiend and usually snaffles the lot when my back is turned. (Definitely Xmas Cheer)

Boxing Day
Not a holiday here, so the Correos office was open, but some presents were still missing. The staff told people, who seemed to be in the same situation that their packages might turn up the following day. This was code for, ‘there’s a whole pile of stuff in the back, but we haven’t gotten round to sorting it yet, it’s Christmas don’t you know.”
Man United were playing Sunderland, but frustratingly it wasn’t being screened live on Television (Man Utd won 4 – 0 which made it even more frustrating), so we went to the beach instead even though, after the pavito dinner, our stomachs were probably too big to expose in public. (2 humbugs and 1 Xmas Cheer)

27th December
Needed to shed the Christmas pounds, so we headed for the 17 kilometre wide crater around Mount Teide. It seemed everyone else had the same idea and the roads were packed. When we reached the crater we parked in the overfilled car park beside the Parador and headed along a track through the lava away from the crowds. Within five minutes we were alone in a landscape straight out of Jurassic Park. We climbed up to the rim of the crater, through snow and ice, despite the sun burning our faces and drying out our lips. At the top we looked out over a sea of white clouds. It was like being alone on the top of the world. On our way back we bumped into a really nice English couple. This might seem unremarkable on an island which welcomes  millions of British visitors a year, but the sad fact is that to bump into any away from the main tourist enclaves, and pit- stop popular tourist sites is still a rarity. (Xmas Cheer)

30th December
Quickly passing over West Ham beating Man Utd on the 29th, it was my birthday and time for another pointless trip to the Correos as the wayward present was still missing. It was a beautiful warm and sunny day, so we headed for the beach again (for only the second time in as many months) and in the evening ate out at a restaurant we’d been meaning to try for some time, El Templo de Vino. We liked the look of its menu because its tapas dishes were different from the traditional offerings. We ordered choco (grilled cuttlefish), ensaladilla (a mixed salad of potato, veg and usually tuna), croquetas (fried ham and fish croquetes), german sausage and mustard, pork pinchos with spicy dip and dates wrapped in bacon. All washed down with extremely quaffable wine. Delicious. (Xmas Cheer)

Nocheviejo (New Years Eve)
Always a hoot, but takes a bit of prep if you want to ensure good luck for the coming year. 12 grapes are essential; to be consumed on the countdown to midnight and this year I learned that if you wear red underwear then you’re guaranteed even better luck. Not a problem for Andy, the shops are always full of red underwear for women at this time of year, presumably because of the luck thing, but I had to make do with a pair of boxers whose redness was confined to the waistband. I don’t know if this means my chances of good luck will be proportionally less. As usual the firework display on the harbour was sensational, the Latino band enthusiastic, and the atmosphere electric. We reluctantly pulled ourselves away at around 4 am. (Xmas Cheer and then some)

New Years Day
Pretty much a rerun of Christmas Day, except that in Britain there’s a full footballing calendar, so Man Utd were playing again and once again the game wasn’t being screened live. As we hadn’t hit our bed until after five, this wasn’t the disappointment it should have been, but the result, Man Utd 1 – Birmingham 0, adds to another lovely chilled day (Xmas Cheer)

5th & 6th January
The week after that is pretty much for the kids, a run up to Tres Reyes on the 6th January; the day when Spanish kids are visited by the Three Kings and receive gifts. There’s a parade on the night of the 5th in most towns on the island when the Kings arrive on floats, camels and all sorts. This year we gave it a miss, watching the Aston Villa – Man Utd FA cup match instead. Finally a Man Utd game on TV. The downside is that we had to watch it in a bar where the Canarian barman is an avid Man Utd hater and makes derogatory marks about the team throughout the game. The irony of this is that this is a guy who he says he hates Man Utd because of the money they spend on buying players. And who does he support? Real Madrid!!!! I ask you? We win courtesy of an inspired Wayne Rooney and the ever wonderful Ronaldo. (A double Xmas Cheer)

And that was it, except the Correos had the last word and decided to shut on the 7th of January, presumably in lieu of the previous day, thereby having more holidays than anyone else in Spain. To cap it all, when I dragged myself down the Correos office the following day I found it in a state of chaos (cynics might say ‘so what’s new’), their ticket machine, designed to create an orderly queuing system, like the staff, wasn’t working properly and the missing parcel was still missing…Bah Humbug!

The first signs of Xmas on Tenerife

I hadn’t been looking forward to it, but with the first rains due any day now, the time for procrastination was long over. The orchid tree had become an unruly mess and was sprawling over the herb patch menacingly like a schoolyard bully. It’s not the sawing and chopping that puts me off, in fact I love the whole ‘Tool Time Tim’ element.  It’s the getting rid of the disaster area debris afterwards that adds a real comatose inducing aspect to it.

Every branch has to be cut into manageable pieces with a pair of secateurs and put into garden refuse bags; a painfully long process which leaves me with blisters and aching hands. On the brighter side, it does give a much needed boost to the woodpile. Even here at a 100 metres or so altitude, there’s a noticeable difference in temperature from the coast and during December to March, evenings can be on the cool side; a good excuse to fire up the wood burning stove.

I’d been going at it for a couple of hours, the pile of branches stubbornly refusing to diminish. My motivation, like the strength in my hands, was on the point of taking a vacation when a loud squawking in the distance told me that a flock of parrots were heading my way. I never tire of seeing parrots, so it was the perfect excuse to down tools for a few seconds to watch their multicoloured fly-past. This time there were six of them; large lime green ones heading for the hills, no doubt escapees from Loro Parque (a zoo on the other side of Puerto de la Cruz).

Brief interlude over, I picked up the secateurs and with a deep sigh turned to face the chest high pile of branches again to find that I had another avian visitor, a more unexpected one. Sitting on the branches, just a few inches away was a robin with the most vivid red breast. An incongruous vision in the warm sunshine on an island near the coast of Africa. But then, the festive season is just around the corner. Already Christmas lights are starting to spring up around the town. There’s chestnuts roasting on open braziers beside the harbour for the fiesta of San Andrés, so why not a robin in our garden. All that we need now is for it to snow on the volcano (usually happens toward the end of November) to complete the picture. And if I ever finish getting rid of those damn orchid branches that’ll be the Yule time log on the Christmas cake. Chestnuts, robins, snow on Mount Teide and a roaring fire – and it’s warm during the day. You just couldn’t have a more perfect combination.