Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Global wetting

I don’t know about the effects of greenhouse gases on global warming but they do seem to have brought about more extreme weather to the planet; violent storms, high winds and heavy rain.

The Canary Islands have long been the choice place for those looking for some winter sun but not yesterday. Two hours of intense rain starting at 4:30pm were enough to bring chaos to the north of Tenerife. In Los Realejos, Puerto de la Cruz, La Guancha, San Juan de la Rambla and Icod de los Vinos emergency services were stretched to deal with flooding in houses.

Badly hit was Puerto de la Cruz where in the Punta Brava district the roundabout was totally flooded. The central plaza at Charco was awash with a current of mud, Mequinés street was totally flooded and in the La Paz district, two cars had to be towed away by the police. The Martiánez zone was closed off to traffic due to the danger of landslips.

According to AEMET, Puerta de la Cruz had 19.6 millimetres of rain per square metre in just two hours.

Fortunately, in spite of all the material damage that was caused, there were no reports of deaths.

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