EVEN though most of Spain is basking in unseasonably-high temperatures and ski slopes are melting over a fortnight ahead of their usual closing dates, one of the country’s warmest regions has issued warnings over snow and ice.
The Canary Islands typically enjoys milder winter climates than the mainland and the Balearic Islands, meaning March often already brings sunbathing weather – but the Teide National Park is currently cut off at two of its main entrance roads due to sleet, sheet-ice and pockets of snow.
Tenerife traffic authorities reported this morning that kilometres 32 to 43 on the TF-21, the Teide entrance from El Portillo via La Orotava, and kilometres 24 to 43 on the TF-24, via La Esperanza, were shut due to snow and slush on the carriageways.
Carreteras Tenerife (‘Tenerife Highways’), via its Twitter site @carreterasTF, urged motorists not to go up to the Teide today (Monday) due to wet, icy and snowy conditions that presented accident risks.
And the Teide cable-car has been shut all day, not expected to open until at least tomorrow – or later if conditions persist.
Conversely, the snow has made even more visitors than usual want to go up the Teide, given that this is only the second incident of its type in 2019 – the previous being in January – and the fact that the white stuff on Spain’s highest mountain is incredibly rare due to its latitude close to the tropics.
Footage has been shared, and gone viral, on social media.
Teide National Park is one of the Canary Islands’ biggest holidaymaker attractions – a dormant volcano where visitors can walk safely into the crater, surrounded by an eerie, lunar landscape and tropical vegetation, the park sees literally millions of tourists arrive by road and cable car every year.
The photograph, from the weather page ElTiempo, shows the Teide as it was in January this year, coated in snow.
