Weather warnings for Christmas Eve 2018

The Spanish meteorological sevice has issued weather warnings for La Gomera and the rest of the Canary Islands for tomorrow, Christmas Eve 2018. Easterly winds are expected to gust to 80 km/h and will bring dust from the Sahara which could reduce visibility to just 3000 metres. Rough seas are to be expected. 

This weather, called Calima here in the Canary Islands, is expected to gradually improve from Christmas day. There won't be much heat with this Calima episode as we're in mid-winter when the Sahara is fairly cold.

Calima sailing

Calima was an unwelcome Christmas visitor late yesterday when the air became loaded with dust from the Sahara in the strong easterly wind. This time of the year it is a cool Calima as the desert air is cold now and there's even been snow in some lower parts of the Atlas mountain range in North Africa. The forecast is for more of the same for another few days before the air will finally clear over La Gomera. See regularly updated weather column on top right.

Above image was taken just a short while ago and in the dusty haze you can barely make out the Dutch sailing vessel 'Morgenster', a converted former herring lugger, heading for Vueltas harbour in Valle Gran Rey, where another larger sailing ship, the three-masted 'Alexander von Humboldt II' (the beer ship), is already berthed.

Dust from Sahara for a few days

The current weather situation with very deep low pressure systems that are bringing storms to much of Northern Europe and very strong high pressure in the central Atlantic is now steering an easterly air current from North Africa directly over the Canary Islands, bringing some dust from the Sahara desert. This current is called calima in the Canaries and much dreaded. More information: Calima: Weather from the Sahara

This time of the year the heat wave normally associated with calima is more like a cool breeze as the Sahara is pretty cold in the depth of winter, and while the regions further up in the mountains may become a couple of degrees warmer, it is a bit colder than normal around the coast and in the lower regions. The presence of cold air in the upper layers adds a chill to this 'cold calima'. However it won't be as bad as last weekend and no warnings have been issued.

This present spell of calima is expected to last well into next week and once again the eastern islands are bearing the brunt of the dust due to their closeness to the Sahara while La Gomera will get less of it. Above is the forecast chart of the University of Athens' SKIRON model for noon today showing the relatively minor surface dust concentrations, and below the same for Tuesday, January 13th.