WINTER´S HERE

H. Carter WE are going to have a very cold Christmas and the chances of a white Christmas here in the Balearics are still looking good. Winter officially started in the early hours of this morning, at 1.22am to be exact, and today will be the shortest of the year. The met. office said yesterday that a new patch of bad weather is going to hit Spain today and will hit the Balearics and the south and west coasts of Spain in particular. Temperatures will drop further and more rain, which will be heavy and persistent at times, can be expected this evening, along with the odd hail storm, and tomorrow when isolated storms and outbreaks of heavy rain are forecast with snow at 1000 metres. However, conditions will start to improve on Sunday. It will remain cold but the rain will start to move out of the Balearics. However, the strong winds will continue to batter the Balearics over the Christmas period. This year may well have been one the warmest since records began in Spain, but it certainly does not feel like it this Christmas. The good news is that, according to the National Observatory, this winter is going to be one of the shortest for various centuries. According to the observatory, this winter is going to last 88 days, 23 hours and 45 minutes until Spring arrives on March 21. This winter will also see the sun and the earth moving closer together than at any other time of the year. On January 3, we will be just 147 million kilometres from the sun, five million kilometres closer than at the start of the summer. There will also be two eclipses during this winter. A total eclipse of the moon on March 3-4 and an eclipse of the sun two weeks later, although this will not be visible from Spain.