Weather - not climate!
Come prepared. Here (and in Cantabria, Euzkadi and much of Galicia) you can experience four seasons in one day, summer in mid-winter, and winter in mid-summer. There are December and January days when I can work in the garden stripped to swimming trunks. Equally, it is not all that uncommon in July or August to see fresh snow sprinkling the highest summits of the Picos de Europa. 'El Sur', a Föhn-like south wind, brings with it very low barometric pressure, very low humidity, and high temperatures. It also produces some spectacular dawns, since if there is a cloud cover, it is usually obscuring the northern part of the sky. Fishermen call the Cantabrican coast 'la trampa' - 'the trap' - since bad weather sweeping in from the Atlantic piles itself up against the Cordillera Cantábrica - and stays there. Many of us still rely on the weather phenomena experienced at the start of each...
