Gota Fria weather Warning now issued by Spanish weather agencies
Please please take notice, a Gota Fria Alert has been issued by the Spanish Met office. A gota fria is not huge amounts of rain like a lot of people think. It's lumps of ice falling from the sky.
The situation is now deepening,
AEmet has issued a special warning for later in the week for a possible Gota Fria, for those of you who have not experienced the phenomenon,
This situation could become very dangerous from wednesday thru Friday,
Take great care and heed any civil warnings,
If this situation evolves we can expect very heavy rains along the coast during this period with possible life threatening weather.
We will keep a very close eye on this situation and keep you informed.
This is from the costa blanca weather report on Facebook but its been issues by Spanish met office
If you need to sort your windows out please do it you only have another 72 hours to sort things if this hits us.
Please share this info to your friends and the people who can't get out, anyone who can't get out and needs food please ask friends. There making this a life threatening situation
2004 Snow La Marina
remember the snow in Nov 2004,I as driving back from Santa Pola and saw a few snow flakes on the 332, by the time I got to the garage nr the urb there was 2 feet snow everywhere, the whole of the urb came to a standstill, cars abandoned, canopies down everywhere, tin roofs caved in,I believe someone died, police shut all the roads, next day snow ploughs trying to get the roads open, film crews from national TV, I say snow cos I still have a laugh with Spanish friends today, they say it was hail but it was def snow then ice falling but strange thing only fell on La Marina, Spanish reckon it was a present from Franco for the Brits
It was not snow it,was hail, that is what made it an event rather than "oh it snowed"...
Goonerpeter, there are some great photos on the net of the damage caused then by the hailstorm and the snow drifts in the urbanisation. You can see them on a local La Marina Info site.
cheers Roger, did a lot of damage, took me 1 hour to walk/slide down from the top of the Urb to my house,
will have a look at these pics, are they on the internet ? cars were abandoned right back to the 332.
goonerpeter,
I think you have your dates slightly wrong, it was February 8th 2005. I took photographs and kept the paper cuttings, quote
"LA MARINA HIT BY ICE STORM" La Marina has been declared a disaster zone following a freak ice and hailstorm that hit the Urb. No mention of snow.
If I knew how to put photos on here,I would do, perhaps someone could inform me.
Hi,yes you may be right, just remember it was winter 2004/2005,,started as light snowflakes on my head and finished with golf balls of ice, I had driven down from uk with all my belongings in a hire van from UK just before this,,1,350 miles in 17 hours ,and was still knackered from the drive, then got the blame for this storm
I don't care if it says it was official, I watched it for 2 hours when it first started and it was hale stones and the noise was deafening.
correct burr tracy, and my 4 month old new car got battered, i'm ready (I hope) for this one, just hope i'm not asleep if and when it happens.
you must have missed the first 2 hours of snowflakes before the ice,,, cos it lasted 4 hours
Goonerpeter, I tried to post a link yesterday to the page that shows a slide show of photos of the Ice Storm and the damage it caused in 2005 but the new administrators of the forum removed it. However, i will try again to reveal it to you. There are many different interesting local photos in the slide show. You can see it on the La Marina Info site: lamarina.info
It seems we didn't get the full whack of the Gota Fria.
If this forum had advanced technology in allowing us to upload pictures I could show you how severe Denia, Javea an Albacete were battered yesterday but I can't as you can't upload pictures to this forum.
It would be great if you could show everyone your pictures.
This is why we offer you your own blog on "My Spanish Life"
You can add pictures and videos as well as as much text as you would like.
All you then have to do is add a link from your post to your blog.
Much better we think than filling up a forum with pictures.
See that was never explained to us. If I'm correct Steve or Ian did say you can write you own kind of stories. Never was we told we could post pictures and add the link to the wall.
No more complaints as its now been explained in simple terms and will be doing that laters
Andi we hope you add many more post to the forum, or blogs your last one about the weather was selected to be added to our Face Book page and was than read by over 19,000 people and shared by 244.
The normal amount for a post is less than 1000 people
Great artical.
It was definately hail stones no snow has fallen on La Marina in the 23 years I have lived here
definitely started as light snow flakes ,went on to be ice balls, first snow in 85 years
Agree totally it started at 6pm stood and watched it, no snow it was hail stones watched the taxi rank canopy go down as well...
Where do you get this word 'official' from? There were no reports in any Spanish newspaper or on any Spanish TV stations at that time, of nieve, only granizo.
So please explain where you obtained an 'official' report.
my mate Frank was singing on the karoke in Big Ben top of the urb when the snow started,,he took one look outside, came in and sung this,,great song,,,,http://youtu.be/SXsI8vMtb0A
apparently the snow damaged all the high chairs in La Marina,,never been replaced lol
official as in 3 insurance claim form letters,, costa blanca news, ,Spanish national TV,,The Sun,, Sky News,, Frank in Big Ben
Goonerpeter,
Sorry your wrong hearsay... I was there no snow, very childish about highchairs. And that is OFFICIAL ........
At the time, a sleigh pulled by reindeer would have been good to have. Snow or ice or whatever was on the ground. Is that so important? Song or no song in the karaoke-bar. Who cares?
Andi a Gota Fria is huge amounts of RAIN, I am not sure of the figures but it's something like 40cms per square metre in 1 hour
Andi
I have know idea where you got that gota fria info from maybe Russia, certainly not in this area, I have just looked at the long term forecast, and its wall to wall sunshine except for sunday 29th sept and sunday 5 th oct
and then its only showers. So stop scaremongering...
Andi wasn't scaremongering. This info was posted 3 weeks ago and came from the Costa Blanca Weather site and indeed some parts of valencia and Alicante were indeed affected by this bad weather. You may have looked at the forecast but all that will tell you is the predicted weather in advance, not the weather past. Please check the date of Andi's original post before accusing him of scaremongering!
UPDATE.
At the moment we have very cold air at altitude over France, -12ºc at 5700m or 500hpa, this cold plume is drifting SSE, At the same time we have an area of low pressure entering Spain in a NE to SW direction, as it progresses the low will suck in air from the cold plume over france and will become detached from the jetstream causing it to stall as it meets the very warm waters of the Med.
This is how a Gota Fria works, the cold air meeting the very warm waters will cause the warm air to rise rapidly and become super cooled, when it can no longer support its own weight it falls in spactular style along the costas.
At this moment it is very hard to say where will bear the brunt,
Needless to say if this situation does evolve it can become very dangerous, so listen to your local news and take care,
Will keep you updated.