The Unique Property Site Blog

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The Algarve in January

Here’s another look at the weather we are having to cope with here on the edge of the continent. As you can see we are having to cope with some serious cold.

Yes I know, your heart bleeds for us. I had an email from my daughter telling me the night time temperature in Southern England was a mind numbing -6C the other day. And she asks me when I’m coming back. Sadly we shall have to have a much bigger up-ramp of global temperatures before I venture back, that is if I ever do. Back in the last interglacial we had lions and tigers roaming around Salisbury Plain. It was even a lot warmer than it is now back in the time of Chaucer. I dont remember Chaucer making any complaints about the heat back then.

I suspect we are having a slight change in the seasons. This is about the third or fourth in my lifetime, from the bitter cold of the 1948 winter, which I have mentioned before, to the hot summers just a few years later, to the bunch of exceptionally cold winters that ran from the late sixties to the mid eighties. If you’re measuring from about 1980 then the climate has indeed warmed considerably since then. But if you’re measuring from the mid nineties, then there has been not much change. But that isn’t climate, we have a word for that, it’s weather. There even used to be a joke about it. The UK doesn’t have a climate, it just has weather. And I’m sure you know the Flanders and Swann song about the English weather. If you dont, do look it up. It’s short and fun, and wickedly accurate. It takes as its starting point an old English ballad:

January brings the snow,
Makes your feet and fingers glow.

And of course, the weather just goes on and on until we get to December, and then it’s… but if you dont know the song I wont spoil the ending for you.

But to go back to shifting seasons. When I was a kid, the leaves fell during the first week in November. Now they hang on till the first week in December.

When I first came to the Algarve, we had gales and floods from December through till Easter. We get gales of course, but we haven’t had a decent flood for a decade or more. And I’m sure the spring flowers are coming out a few days earlier each year. Here is another pic, taken the morning I wrote and posted this.



One upon a time this was a lawn, but there is an invasive weed here called oxalis. It's rather nice, but it is everywhere. I've given up. In spring my lawn is a mass of yellow flowers. Doesn't show up well here. This is what the plants looks like close up.



Spring starts in December in this part of the world, and it goes on until May 1st, which is the beginning of summer.

And that’s another thing. The summers have been getting hotter, although last year was nowhere near as hot as the year before. Let’s hope this latest weather change continues; warmer winters and cooler summers. At least that’s how I like it.

I’ve decided to stick my shopping receipts altogether at the end of the month so you can see what it costs me to live here. See you again then.

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