On December 16 it was hot in Puerto de la Cruz. Very hot. So much heat that, in the absence of confirmation from AEMETthe 29.6 degrees that were recorded in the Tenerife city is highest overnight low ever recorded in December throughout the northern hemisphere. I repeat it to avoid confusion: never recorded in the entire northern hemisphere.

And the most curious thing is that that is not the worst that has happened in the archipelago.

Hard days. To begin with, because in recent days Storm Dorothea has left hurricane gusts in many parts of the western Canary Islands. We talk about higher winds at 130 km/h in La Gomera and on the island of Iron. What’s more, on December 14 5,000 lightning strikes were recorded in the surroundings of the archipelago.

They have been, in short, a few complicated days on a good number of islands.

The news is that, anyway, the weather problems are not over. Because, according to AEMETduring the next few days an enormous amount of suspended dust is going to come out of the Sahara and swallow the islands. And this is nothing more than evidence that the Canary Islands are seeing the frequency and intensity of the haze increase so far this century.

Since 2033, without going any further, dust intrusions have been doubled.

And that has problems. According to the work of the University of La Lagunaup to “2% more people die from heart disease the two days following the haze phenomena.” What’s more, “on haze days there are more admissions for acute heart failure and there is also an 86% association with the mortality of patients with this pathology admitted during haze days.”

On the other hand, “asthma worsens its symptoms (and) COPD symptoms worsen when exposed to pollution” and we know good ink that “oxidative stress and lung cancer are related to exposure to pollution.”

This episode of haze will also affect the Peninsula, but the Canary Islands are starting to be very problematic.

As if that were not enough, a DANA appears on the horizon. In the short term, the Canary Islands have a relatively complex picture. A very strong storm, the haze (with the related heat peaks) and, to top it all off, the DANA that is beginning to prepare in the southwest of the Peninsula will end up affecting the islands.

The Canary Islands also join the enormous thermal changes these days.

Image | AEMET

In techopiniones | The haze returns and no, there is nothing normal about it