Tenerife has favorable weather conditions to contain the fire, but the troops must try to put a stop to the fire before the weekend.
The flames have flooded the green pine forest that surrounds the peaks of Tenerife in a day in which Favorable weather conditions have prevailed to control the fire which, however, will not be for long. The island’s firefighting teams are working around the clock to stop the crude advance of the flames in the face of the threat of a new episode of high temperatures that the State Meteorological Agency (Aemet) expects to begin this Friday and affect Tenerife starting Saturday.
The new episode of heat, which is expected to last until Sunday, could cause “the combustible material – that is, the vegetation in the area – is warmer and easier to burn”recalled Víctor Quintero, territorial delegate of the Aemet in Canary Islands. Today and tomorrow are key days to try to control or corner the flames because the weather conditions are quite beneficial.
The temperatures in the area are between 20 degrees minimum and 30 maximum. Almost 10 degrees less than last weekend due to the heat wave that the Archipelago was suffering. Specifically, yesterday, the highs in Güímar and Candelaria, enclaves where the fire started, stood at 27 and 24.6 degrees, respectively. “These are normal summer temperatures and well below what we recorded last week,” Quintero said.
The wind will blow weakly for the next few days, just 10 kilometers per hour
The wind was also favorable in controlling the flames, since it did not blow too hard. “We are registering average speeds of just 10 kilometers per hour, with occasional gusts of 30 kilometers per hour,” explained the Aemet delegate. In Candelaria the maximum gust of the day was 26 kilometers per hour (at 01:30 in the morning) and in Güímar 43 kilometers per hour (at 15:20 in the afternoon). The fire has been generated in an intermediate zone, between the layer where the trade winds blow, and therefore, it is more humid, and in which the Saharan air mass is maintained. And it is that the flames that are calcining the Tenerife pine forest are between 1,300 and 1,400 meters high. “Right in the thermal inversion layer,” recalls Quintero. The humid layer extends from the sea to 300 meters of altitude, while the Saharan layer is beyond 1,500 meters. This causes the wind to change direction depending on the height at which the flames are placed. “On some occasions it will blow from the northeast – a typical trade wind situation – and on others from the southeast”, he insists. The environmental factor that plays the most against the extinction of this great fire is humidity. “It stands at barely 20%, which is a negative factor,” stresses Quintero, who indicates that today it may increase to 40%, although as he insists, it will still be a “very low” figure. After the fleeting respite, this Friday the heat will once again make an appearance in the Archipelago. He will start from the same place he left: the south of Gran Canaria. There it is expected that as of this Thursday the thermometers can rise to 34 degrees. On Friday the high temperatures will extend to Lanzarote and Fuerteventura, where maximum temperatures of 34 degrees can be reached. Already entered the Saturday, the thermometers will mark maximum temperatures of 32 degrees in some points of Tenerife and The Palm and most of the islands will be able to reach 30 degrees. “Sunday will be the most intense hot day,” Quintero highlighted.
Temperatures will drop very slowly on Monday and will actually still be quite hot. The canaries will have to wait until Thursday for the high temperatures to leave the Archipelago. The next two days are, therefore, the key days to consider the fire that is unceremoniously swallowing the green landscape of the Tenerife outskirts under control.
