Glacier in central Spain? Hailstorm causes rare and fleeting photo opportunity

Olive-farmer Álvaro Nieto filmed the result of the hailstorm on one of his fields in Porzuna (Ciudad Real province), and his Twitter video shows how it led to a thick, moving ice-sheet being created.

Scenes like the above photograph – a screen-shot from Álvaro's Twitter video – are normally consistent with Arctic and Antarctic regions, or at very high altitudes in cooler climates, meaning the landowner was keen to get it on camera before it melted, in case nobody believed him.

His footage has gone viral and been shown in the national and regional press, so it has been immortalised now, even though it would have turned to slush and then to mud within a day or so.

Hail left a thick, white covering on the hill known as the Cerro Santo, and when it slid off, what landed at the bottom on top of part of his olive grove looked like something out of the Patagonia, the Alpes or the polar regions.

Although it buried the lower parts of several of his trees, olives are hardy and used to the wilder climates found at altitudes, where they grow best – in fact, they can live to be thousands of years old.

And the 'glacier' was very localised, so Porzuna's local olive crop has not suffered any negative effects from the hailstorm.

Nieto says his olive harvest will go ahead from about mid-December as usual.

Mayor of Porzuna Carlos Jesús Villajos says hailstones struck the village at around 15.30 on Wednesday in a 'very specific area', meaning they were not widespread, even if their effects were dramatic from a photography point of view.

Despite being a southern European country and with weather to match, and sub-tropical natural features such as deserts, fan palms and cacti, Spain, curiously, has points in common with countries bordering the Arctic circle – the Aurora Borealis has been spotted from Spanish territory on a handful of occasions, and it even has geysers.