La Gota Fría

LA GOTA FRIA

December has been an interesting month in Javea, Spain. It was quite different from last year, which was surprisingly warm, dry, and sunny. After a year of living in Spain, I’m afraid our internal thermometers have adjusted to the warmer climate and we’ve lost our thick Minnesota skin (literally and figuratively).

Last year we a saw about two weeks of rain in November and that was it for the nearly the rest of the year. However, this December began with a week of rain, then we were relieved by only a week of sunshine before the rain returned, this time non-stop, for another two weeks. This type of rainfall is highly unusual in this region, except for the occasional “gota fria” which is a meteorological event that happens about every decade in the east and southeast of Spain. During a gota fría, there are large amounts of rainfall which cause a lot of damage because the earth can’t absorb the water fast enough and also because the drainage infrastructure often isn’t there.

 Rio Gorgos como normal

Most towns have created riverbeds that start inland and lead to the sea, which solely exist to divert water from these infrequent, but very powerful gota fría rainfalls. We watched the “rio Gorgos” river bed a block away from our house and about two blocks away from the sea, practically overflow on the last day of the storm. In fact, the three day gota fría had already finished in Javea, but the river kept growing meter by meter from heavier rains inland that were just then reaching the sea. In other towns in the Valencia region, there was terrible flooding in city streets, sending cars, trucks, and debris through narrow streets. Sadly there were at least three deaths due to the storm as well.

Luckily, Javea’s mayor and members of the town hall took preventative measures to prepare the town before the storm. For several days before, workers built a “dique” - a large wall out of the beach sand- in the Arenal beach area. To my surprise, the dike proved useful in protecting the promenade from large waves depositing lots of debris, trash, and sand. It took a few weeks to clean all of it up and I'm sure a lot of money. However, during this process the sand dike was the world's best playground for the kids in Javea including mine who enjoyed playing king of the sand for hours.

Before the storm

After the storm