Translate

Sunday, February 16, 2014

A cool and windy Sunday

Taken at 10am this morning
While here in Valle Gran Rey the wind seems to have died down considerably since yesterday, on the other side of the island a gust of 88 km/h was recorded in the capital San Sebastian this morning and the weather warnings for strong winds and heavy seas remain in place. The temperature has recovered a bit and today shouldn't feel quite as cold as yesterday, but it will still be below the average for this time of the year. Right now it has reached 16ºC and will rise more later in the day. There are some showers expected today, but not as frequent and as heavy as yesterday, when I took the picture below during one of the blustery downpours in the afternoon. The photo appears to be fuzzy but that is the rain and you can just make out the wild state of the sea on the top of the image:
La Gomera received a lot of rain yesterday. The official weather station in Agulo  in the island's north registered 82.2mm of rain, while the mountain village of Chipude which thrones over the south had 77.4mm and the second highest peak in the centre had 81.4mm. The latter station also registered the highest wind gust (90km/h) and the lowest temperature at 0.1ºC - you can call that freezing. Add to that total a power outage in the whole island lasting for about two hours, rockfalls, roads closed to traffic, heavy seas and you'll know that yesterday was an unusually unpleasant day for La Gomera and most parts of the Canaries.
There still is a lot of debris like fallen rocks and blown-off branches on the roads. Crews are out clearing this, but please drive carefully. Hiking in the mountains is not advisable today and tomorrow.
From Monday the weather is expected to improve a lot with much more sunshine, higher temperatures, less wind and a few scattered showers.
Here's a few impressions of yesterday's rare conditions:
Image of a traditional roof with hail and sleet accumulation, taken
yesterday afternoon near the mountain village of Igualero  ©gomeraverde.es
...and this impressive video of a stretch of road at about 1200m altitude (source Gomera Today):
                      

No comments :