"We didn't come here for this!"

The title of this post is a catchphrase in our household for whenever we get a spell of bad weather (said in jest, I should add - we're not total wimps). It was a regular complaint of an English friend who lived here for a few years before returning "home". Like so many others, she planned her migration south during a chilly wet English winter (in the comfort of her centrally heated house) after being convinced by TV shows such as A Place in the Sun that Andalucía was exactly that.  

In the winter of 2010/11 it started raining on Christmas Eve and went on more or less continuously until the end of March.  Rivers burst their banks, low-lying towns and villages were under water, roads were washed away, and crops could not be sown.  But on the whole the locals were happy, because after several years of drought the reservoirs were once again full.

The same phenomenon is occurring this year, except it started in mid-December.  I'm writing this at the end of January, and there is no let-up in sight.  This time it's different in that the storms have names, the most recent being Joseph and Kristin. The stats don't lie:

The blue bars show cumulative rainfall in December and January averaged over the period 1991-2020, the red ones are what we've had this year - three times more than average.  It's felt colder than usual as well, but that could just be down to the lack of sunshine. Normally you can spend time outside during the day to warm up, or at least sit in a sunny window, but this year it's been impossible. Even the cats have been shivering. 

Immigrants from Britain are nearly always shocked during their first winter here. I know I was. The temperature outside may be 18 or 20º on a sunny afternoon, but houses aren't insulated or double-glazed - they are built to stay cool in summer, not keep the heat in during winter.  Most people give up trying to heat the house to anything that feels remotely comfortable and resort to extra layers of clothing and electric blankets on the sofa. The lucky ones have wood-burning stoves and keep themselves extra warm lugging logs around.

Snow in Grazalema on 19 January. Sadly Alcalá is too low for scenes like this.

The bad weather has side-effects other than personal comfort.  Rain and wind can cause power cuts, mostly just for a second but enough to knock out the internet. The soil and rocks get waterlogged and things start collapsing - down the road from us a wall fell into the street, and there have been road closures all over the place. I've put on 2kg through too much comfort food and not enough exercise ...

But one has to be stoical, it's part of life here. There are some who complain about Alcalá being too hilly, but at least we won't be flooded out.  The reservoirs, after being down to 15% capacity a year ago, are full again. And, unlike our friend in England who didn't come here for this, at least we know the sun will come out eventually.

For the record, here are some stats recorded at the Jerez meteorological station showing average weather conditions over a 30-year period. This might help if you're thinking of moving here for the weather, or coming for a holiday, but unfortunately they don't include years since 2020, most of which have had summers hotter than usual. But at least you can see that on average there are ten cloudless days in January, whereas this year I don't think there were any.