Bad Thursdays: Mallorca's November weather

The largest fair to be held in Mallorca is Inca's Dijous Bo. It is always held on the same Thursday (dijous) in November, one that falls more or less in the middle of the month. "Bo" means good. Almost inevitably though, the weather for Dijous Bo is less than good. It always appear to be grey when it takes place, and sometimes the weather is worse.

In 2001, Dijous Bo, which should have been held on 15 November, was cancelled. Some indoor events went ahead but the outdoor events - most of the fair therefore - were impossible. On the front cover of the "Majorca Daily Bulletin" for that day, there was a headline which simply said: "Freezing". The island was on emergency footing after a forecast for freak weather had been issued. The emergency meant no Dijous Bo. It was a bad Thursday, and a photo of heavy snow in the mountains the day before showed just how bad things were.

In the paper for that day before, a report said that wind, rain and snow were to return. The report was accurate. On the same page as this report was a headline which read: "Balearics ask Madrid to declare the region a disaster zone". And yet, the freezing weather hadn't yet caused the havoc that it was going to on that Wednesday. So why would the Balearics have been looking for the region to have been declared a disaster zone?

That was because of what had happened a few days before. On the Sunday (11 November), the headline informed us that the Balearics had been battered by biting winds and torrential rain. There was more to come on that Sunday. Mallorca was living through what has gone down in the island's weather legend as the big storm or the hurricane of 2001. Snow, high winds, flooding, trees uprooted, roofs torn off, roads impassable and subsequently in need of repair, two people dead. And when it looked as though the worst of the weather was over, on the Wednesday came the freezing conditions and even more snow.

If you read through the report on Sunday, 11 November, you will note that it says: "hard to believe that this time last week people were on the beaches and even in the sea". It is a report which will sound very familiar. Mallorca hasn't been battered by quite the same weather as it was in November 2001, but in November 2013, the sudden transformation from summer conditions to dreadful conditions has been similar to what happened in 2001. Dijous Bo, for which the weather this year was rainy, went ahead without any problem. Had it been a day later, things might have been different. The rain was torrential, while in the mountains, where the temperatures are lower, the snow fell.

One of the more remarkable aspects about the bad weather that Mallorca has just been suffering is the amount of surprise that has been expressed. It does perhaps show the power of social media that photos of snow in the mountains have been met with incredulity and even suggestions that the photos were fake. Those who are unfamiliar with Mallorca's weather probably would find the photos hard to comprehend. But were they to consult weather records, they would comprehend an awful lot more.

The rainfall data for the Albufera weather station gives you an idea. These data are from 1987 to the current time. The average rainfall in November makes it the second wettest month of the year. October is wetter, but its slightly higher average is skewed by what occurred in 1990 - the great flood. Nearly 400mm of rain fell in October 1990. The second wettest (1994) registered 277mm, also in October.

When the records for this November are totted up, it may well prove to have been the wettest November since 1987. It will therefore top 2011 and 2012, which are in positions one and two in terms of rainfall, and in both years, when colder weather pushed in as well, in the mountains there was snow in November.

The exceptionally warm weather of more than a week ago created something of a false impression. With highs nudging the 30 degrees mark, these were far from normal. In the past few years, from 2005, the highest temperatures had been in 2009 and 2006 (26 degrees), and, astonishingly enough, in 2006 this was on 25 November. A year later, on 18 November 2007, there was a record low of 1.5C.

All this goes to show, as if of course we needed any reminding, that weather is unpredictable, and November in Mallorca can be very unpredictable. The high temperatures earlier in the month had many clutching at a winter-sun-tourism straw only to find that a few days later, the straw was buried under snow or had been washed away by a deluge of quite biblical proportions. It is this unpredictability which is at the heart of why the season ends when it does end. We should all admit that this is why it ends when it does end, and if we can't admit this, then we should take a look at the weather data, and if we still need some more convincing we should look at those reports from 2001.

Too Low: Mallorca's mountains

At the risk of offending some people, it should be admitted that God made one or two cock-ups when it came to divvying up geographical attributes. Who exactly was the engineer at God Inc. who managed to make Mallorca's mountains only as high as they are? I think that shareholders should be told, as they have been denied their dividends because of the lack of height for far too long. God should really be placed in front of a parliamentary enquiry and be grilled as to what on earth the thinking was behind mountain peaks which, at their highest, are at minimum 500 metres or, more like it, 1000 metres too low. Someone, God presumably, miscalculated. Had he not, a Mallorcan winter cup might otherwise be overflowing.

A further reason for giving God a hard time at a meeting of the committee for mountains in Mallorca is that had he had the foresight to make the mountains that much higher, we wouldn't be subject, every year, to idiots declaring incredulously: "Oh my God. It snows!? In Mallorca!?"

Yes, it does bloody well snow. A simple glance at Mallorca's latitude and the height of its admittedly not too high peaks would, for anyone with any sense or knowledge,  tell those of an incredulous bent that, well, it isn't that surprising that it snows. Not that it snows that much. Usually. But it does snow. Quite frequently and quite frequently to a depth more than the equivalent to that of the height of a chick pea: in the mountains, such as they are. Had the mountains been higher, however, the incredulous idiots would not exist. They would look at some bloody great mountains and see some snow on top of them even in summer. Like in Corsica, for example.

Had God not cocked up, we would now, thanks to the first cold snap of the Mallorcan winter, be welcoming aircraft, tour operators, skiers with skis, ski-instructors, waiters, hotel workers, delivery drivers and all manner of other ancillary snow-tourism personnel. I say that we would be welcoming them, but Mallorca would, regardless of any natural intervention by God, have decided that it didn't want any of the foregoing. Such is the lack of foresight of Mallorcan winter tourism planning. But the winter tourism planners can breathe a sigh of relief that they don't actually have to bother, because God got it wrong - by at least 500 metres.

The Association for Ski and Mountain Tourism Resorts (ATUDEM) has signed an agreement with the Spanish tourism promotion agency Turespaña to develop the marketing of ski tourism this winter. This is of course ski tourism on the mainland. There isn't any ski tourism on Mallorca because the mountains aren't high enough; this was God's big mistake.

At similar latitudes on the mainland - it isn't totally necessary to go north to the Pyrenees or south to the Sierra Nevada - there are mountains that are higher than Mallorca's and which get more snow. These areas, for example not far from Valencia, can boast cosy log cabins and wintery scenes. Mallorca, on the other hand, can't. Its wintery scenes just look crap. Not enough snow, generally speaking, no skiing, no cosy log cabins and so therefore no tourism.

I blame God almost entirely. There he was, going around claiming that he had made some paradise island, but he was far too strict on mountain building regulations. "We can't make them too high," he presumably said. So, the mountains that there are, are only pretend mountains. Some would say they are no more than hills. And no one goes hill skiing. 


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Mallorca's Big Freeze

Do you remember the winter of 2012? This will be the question posed in years to come when tales of the Mallorcan winter will have reached levels of preposterous exaggeration and will have entered folklore in granting 2012 the title of the big Mallorcan freeze.

Unfortunately, for Mallorca's northern parts and some other parts, the big freeze was something of an anti-freeze. Yes, it was cold, but snow? Too few snowflakes to mention. It snowed. A bit. And not as much as it did two years ago. But nevertheless, the year of the big freeze will find its way into the annals of what was, for anyone on much of mainland Europe, no more than a slight cold snap.

1956 was a different kettle of fish. And the chances were that the fish were left unmolested for some three weeks back then. So much did it snow that it lingered for a week on pavements (or what would have passed for pavements 56 years ago) in places such as Can Picafort. This, at least, is what a "picaforter" tells me, though he clearly isn't 56 years old.

Nevertheless, 1956 was Mallorca's 1962-1963, the winter in Britain when the country came to a standstill for months on end. And do you remember the winter of 1962-1963? I do. The big freeze was no myth. In 1956 in Mallorca, though, there was snow to a depth of 60 centimetres up in the mountains. Nearly two feet in old money. That was a fair old amount of snow, especially for an island where it isn't meant to snow, yet where it does with reasonable regularity.

But back to the fish. At this time of the year, the fishermen expect to take to their boats and go and hound the little "jonquillo" goby fish, catch them in abundance, haul them in and let them be given a sound old battering by the local restaurants. For 1956, the tales are probably so tall that the sea froze. It hasn't frozen in 2012, but marine conditions have been so bad that the jonquillo have been left to swim around rather longer than they might normally do.

The fishermen have been just one set of victims of Mallorca's anti-freeze 2012. Endless photos of what may or may not have been snow posted onto Facebook have been joined by endless other tales of woe. School buses couldn't make it through, planes were grounded because Palma airport had no de-icer, and staff at Pollensa town hall have been forced to wear mittens.

This latter tale of woe isn't, however, anything to do with the anti-freeze of 2012. It has to do with the inadequacy of the heating system. A couple of million or more spent on renovating Pollensa town hall and someone forgot that it can get cold in the old buildings with extremely high ceilings in Mallorca. Clearly this someone hadn't been around in 1956. He or she should have had a word with the bloke in Can Picafort.

Or, he or she should have had a word with the chap from Pollensa's tourist office when it used to be located in Sant Domingo, another ancient stone edifice with high ceilings. One afternoon I found him with gloves on, a heavy coat and a scarf, huddled next to a useless oil-fired radiator. He could barely speak. At some point, maybe in 56 years time when there is another "record" cold snap, they'll have finally got round to realising that most buildings in Mallorca are utterly hopeless in anything other than 40 degrees in summer, and even then most of them are also hopeless.

Still, at least at Pollensa town hall and certainly in the seas in the north of the island, there was water. Unlike in Sa Pobla where lightning struck and the town's water supply went down. Had this water outage lasted longer than much of one day, they could have rung up the ruddy great desalination plant in Alcúdia that no one uses, except for Pollensa. They don't have to worry about wells being put out of action in Pollensa as they are as inadequate as the town hall's heating system; hence a reliance on salty water turned drinkable, which one hopes isn't full of jonquillo because the fishermen haven't been able to get out for a couple of weeks.

Were the town hall to have a decent heating system, it might be because it runs on natural gas. And this, gas, is another tale of the big anti-freeze of 2012. Record gas consumption levels have been registered, say Endesa proudly, conveniently ignoring the fact that records have been in existence for no more than a couple of years, the length of time there has actually been natural gas on Mallorca.

Yes, we will remember the winter of 2012. We won't be allowed to forget it thanks to Mallorcan "veterans" who will remind everyone of the anti-freeze in years to come when the question is asked as to what the weather's like in February. And if they don't remind everyone, there will be something wrong. Like they will be saying it's 20 degrees plus and glorious. And the fact is that they wouldn't be wrong. Because this is what it is likely to be in a week's time. Do you remember the winter of 2012? What winter?


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Cry Wolf: Winter in January

Some of you may remember contrasting photos being published in British national newspapers in June 1975; they were those of Buxton cricket ground in Derbyshire. On 2 June there was snow, on 9 June the ground was bathed in hot sunshine as the cold weather gave way to the first of the two successive hot summers of the mid-70s.

Weather in January in Mallorca does not stretch to such extremes in terms of the 1975 heat, but one week on from "Summer in January", winter has indeed, as I had suggested that it would, made its presence felt. Snow has fallen with even some flakes at sea level. The sea has been roaring in spitefulness, but has not deterred the wet-suited extreme sportists of the kite-surfing fraternity. The air being brought in on the waves has cut and torn. It's nothing unusual though.

It snowed at sea level twice last year. On one occasion it was sufficient to leave a good covering. That was unusual. The current cold snap is not. Yet, and proving that you should always take the weather with you, because in Mallorca, as in the UK, weather is the most predictable of talking-points, some cold temperatures, whiteness on the mountains and even on the beaches become a major event.

Weather is never far away in Mallorca. It's not surprising; it is an island after all. During the course of 2010 there was, on average, one weather alert issued by the local met office for every week of the year: too hot, too cold, too windy, too rainy, too stormy. You can't avoid taking the weather with you, you can't avoid being compelled to say in an awe-struck fashion that the island is on a yellow or an orange alert. If it were on red alert, then you really would know something about weather, but the alerts are so common that they are almost like crying wolf, except for the fact that they tend to be accurate.

Weather, therefore, is bigged up. It is over-hyped, over-stated, over-reported, afforded the status of event that over-blows its real importance or rarity. Like cold and snow. Neither is rare and nor is the narrative that accompanies it.

With the same predictability with which the weather becomes the narration in the media or by the bar, so the predictable invades the description - a big freeze or a winter wonderland. With the same predictability, the camera lens is turned towards layers of white on mountains and landscapes to impress upon an audience, that should know better than to be seduced into believing in the rarity of the event, the existence, the verity of this winter wonderland.

The cry-wolf narrative, the reaching out for the cliché and the facile, paints a false picture, one removed from the commonness of Mallorca's weather. It is the same predictability and impoverishment of narrative that strips away a lexicon of presenting Mallorca in anything other than the obvious and the unthinking. There is, as a consequence, a loss of meaning, a loss of context, a loss of perspective. What is a winter wonderland anyway? I really have no idea. I do have an idea as to a "big freeze", having been around when Britain endured one in the early 60s.

Rather than over-stating, the description of weather, such as the current burst of winter, should, in the absence of an original narrative of descriptors, superlatives, metaphors or similes, be proportionate in its understatement. It's a bit on the cold side will do. Because that is the verity. And being a bit on the cold side will soon give way to it not being so much on the cold side. Normal. Usual. Pretty much the same weather as most years, pretty much at the same time as each year (summer in January giving way to winter in January), pretty much always taking the same weather with you.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Hole In My Snow Shoe: Snowy weather and potholes

Winter tourism in Mallorca. Come to Mallorca, land of snow and cold. For the second time this winter, it snowed at sea level yesterday, rather heavier than the first time, though it did seem to vary as to how much. Moving between Playa de Muro and parts of Alcúdia and Puerto Pollensa, it was evident that there was a great deal more snow that had actually settled in the former two than the latter, so much so that, for instance, there was even a slush trail on the road by the foot of the Sant Marti mountain (at the back of Bellevue). A bit further on, heading towards the town of Alcúdia and then off to Puerto Pollensa, there wasn't any snow covering the grass or trees, as there most certainly was - and a fair bit of it - near to the Muro hospital.

All very exciting of course and all very tempting for the weather exaggerators to get into full out-of-proportion mode. "Five inches in Sa Pobla." Probably not, one feels. Rather like heat in summer brings forth claims of 48 degrees, as was the case last summer but was clearly rubbish, so the oddity of snow inspires drifts, blizzards, entire towns cut off, etc, etc. But snow there was, and our man with a camera, Ben, was out and about photographing it and helpfully Picasa-ing the evidence - http://picasaweb.google.com/mallorcaben/SnowInAlcudia#.

The rotten and cold weather just adds to the ever-present problem of the state of some local roads. Pothole City, i.e. Puerto Pollensa, doesn't really need much assistance from the weather, but some roads do, and tend to get it from heavy rain which has the habit of flaking surfaces and revealing holes, always assuming that the rain is not so heavy that the holes have not been revealed and therefore are not avoided. Thud. There goes another tyre. One does have to have some sympathy with our cyclist friends, confronted not only by barely more than freezing temperatures but also by dirty great trenches in their way, to say nothing of the bay of Pollensa that had been left scattered across the cycle lane on the road between Alcúdia and Puerto Pollensa, following the howlin' wolf of a wind three nights ago. Ah yes, winter tourism. What a splendid idea.

But to return to potholes, you may have heard of the town in Germany which is selling pothole sponsorship. What a ripping idea this is. Who says the Germans have no sense of humour? Fifty euros and you get your name badged onto the fixed hole. "We Need Tar" says the website from the town of Niederzimmern - http://www.niederzimmern.de. Usefully, they've done an English version of their "Kaufen Sie Ihr Schlagloch" campaign and there is a daily tally of Schlaglöcher that have been sponsored - 111 as of yesterday. How many are there, for God's sake? Rather fewer than on the fine Calle Pere Melià in Puerto Pollensa alone, I'd venture, the road that has assumed the mantle of pothole king from the sadly-now-smoothed Calle Arse, aka Bot. Pollensa town hall, and indeed others, could take a leaf out of the Niederzimmern book and raise badly needed funds by having their own hole sponsorships, though there is one slight drawback. To be able to see the sponsor's name would require a close examination of the road surface, which may not be such a wise thing to do as some local chico-racer comes haring around the corner. But they could always issue a map showing newly filled-in potholes with the names of local sponsoring bars arrowed to the relevant hole. Definite winner I'd say, but being Pollensa, rather than getting some international support, they'd do it all in Catalan, so no-one would have a clue what was going on.

* The photo shows Hole number 7 available to purchase in Niederzimmern. They might possibly consider using a rather larger truck, though for 50 euros what can you expect? The photo comes from the site named above. You might also be interested to know that the same site promotes a song dedicated to the holes in the ground by one Michael Altmann. Click on where it says "Ur-Version" and you can hear some of it. Truly dreadful it is as well and therefore highly recommended.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Brothers, Sisters, Where Are You Now?

Does Mallorca never get snow? To see some of the reports the past couple of days, you would be forgiven for thinking that it is a once-in-a-generation event. Except it isn't. It is an at least once if not several times a winter event. But no, somehow space is there to be filled, so let's do so with some photos of those grey peaks, looking slightly less than grey and fairly white. Big deal.

It's also not as though it has hit really low temperatures or as though it has snowed at sea level. I have known it to be minus one and to be snowing (after a fashion) in Alcúdia and Playa de Muro. It was something of an apology for "snowing" - squalls of big sleet, if there is such a thing as big sleet. We have yet to experience anything comparable with that, but one thing that can be said, though, is that it does seem to have been a colder and wetter winter than normal. Even the locals are saying this, so it must be the case, I suppose.


Elsewhere, and rather less trivial than the nature of the weather and a few shots of some snowy mountains, there is news that the crusading judge - Balatasar Garzón - is stirring up the Francoist pot once more. This is the same judge who had wanted graves to be dug up as part of a campaign against former members of the Franco regime and era who might have committed crimes against humanity. A stop was put to that, so now it would appear that Judge Garzón has turned his attention to children of Republicans who were taken away from their parents. Perhaps you were unaware that this was another of the rather unpleasant aspects of the Franco period. They couldn't have the poor children of Spain growing up, tainted by left-wing thinking. Oh no, so they handed them over to the Falange and the Church, that double-header of liberal-minded orthodoxy, in order to get them thinking in the right ways. And of course many of the children and parents have never been and were never re-united.

Something you might also have been unaware of, until this was all reported yesterday in "The Times", was that there was a fair amount of racial purification knocking around in the post-Civil War era. Rather like the Nazis, there was even a manual devoted to the "eugenics of Hispanicity" and to the "regeneration of the race". So there you go, a thoroughly unpleasant bunch they truly were. I wonder, though, back then, if they were aware just how much Jewish and Muslim DNA lingers in contemporary Spaniards (and indeed Mallorcans). No, they almost certainly weren't.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - The Tremeloes (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVz0-tD5d44). Today's title - from a political song in a different context to that of Spain and the "stolen children".

(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)

Show Me Round Your Snow Peaked Mountains

Snow. The recent snowfalls were, for Mallorca and for November, relatively heavy; they even inspired the BBC to announce that people were ski-ing on the island. Well yes, but don’t get any thoughts about Mallorca becoming a ski destination.

The surprise is perhaps that people express surprise that there is snow here. Among those who have never visited Mallorca, that is understandable but for those who have it is far less so. What after all are those bloody great big mounds forming a spine along the west of the island? The highest of the mountains - the Puig Mayor - is 1,445 metres.

It rarely snows that much and some winters hardly at all - last winter for instance. But it is far from uncommon to see whiteness on the tops of the Tramuntana range. Typically it does not snow below around 500 metres, but it can and does, though at sea level it is pretty freakish.

That surprise might be expressed does, I fancy, put the position of Mallorca’s mountains into perspective. Though summer visitors do indeed take trips into the mountains, were one to ask a selection of them to place the following in order of what they associate with Mallorca, see where mountains and mountain scenery would come - sun, sea, beaches, bars, mountains. I don’t think fifth would be far from inaccurate.

This all links back to what I have been saying about winter tourism and especially the marketing of the common perception of Mallorca as part of that winter tourism (or indeed marketing that seeks to alter that perception). The mountains do not form a part of that common perception, in my opinion. To try and market them as an aspect of winter tourism could probably only be as a supplementary item. The Tramuntana range is no Sierra Nevada. I have a brochure for the local equivalent of Air Miles. Among the offers in Spain, being marketed to a Spanish audience, are some mountain destinations - spas and hotels in Cantabria and above Valencia. Mallorca?


QUIZ
Yesterday - Dire Straits. Today’s title - a line from? Very famous group.

(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)