{"id":29761,"date":"2016-10-27T01:52:48","date_gmt":"2016-10-27T01:52:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/heatwave-in-northwest-africa\/"},"modified":"2016-10-27T03:09:41","modified_gmt":"2016-10-27T03:09:41","slug":"heatwave-in-northwest-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/heatwave-in-northwest-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"Heatwave in northwest Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{Eastern Atlantic storm system brings near-record heat to Algeria.}<\/p>\n<p>A large autumn Atlantic storm system has been circulating off the coast of Morocco. It has brought a near constant west-southwesterly wind to the Azores island of Santa Maria. This is a difficult 36 kilometres per hour crosswind for the island\u2019s airport.<\/p>\n<p>Such persistence creates a good swell over the ocean which has been a joy to surfers who have been enjoying the gigantic rollers off the Portuguese coast. Fishermen have not been so keen.<\/p>\n<p>Large areas of low pressure bring both wind and rain. Spain, Portugal, Morocco and Algeria have all received both elements and are used to it in October.<\/p>\n<p>Mauritania is not so used to it. In the mining town of Zou\u00e9rat, the average rainfall for October is 5mm. Water is obtained here from a regular arrival of tankers.<\/p>\n<p>Thunderstorms were recorded in Zou\u00e9rat for at least 24 hours from Tuesday afternoon. And yet only 1mm of rain was actually recorded!<\/p>\n<p>Another unusually notable effect of this churning depression in the ocean is near record warmth over land. A desert wind has been induced from the western Sahara, across northwest Africa and into southern Spain.<\/p>\n<p>The result was a heatwave in Algeria and Morocco. Oujda, in northern Morocco close to the Algerian border, hit 33C on Monday. Its October record is 37C but average only 25C.<\/p>\n<p>Bejaia, on the coast of Algeria, recorded a tremendous 39.5C on Tuesday which is within half a degree Celsius of the October record. It is a full 15 degrees above average.<\/p>\n<p>In the Tunisian city of Beja, the temperature of 37C measured on Wednesday is within 3 degrees of the October record and 12 degrees above average.<\/p>\n<p>The system is slowly weakening and withdrawing its rain, but the hot breeze continues for another day or two across Morocco.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-15959 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/e4f2b13839284521abc9f2c6576f9d3b_18.jpg\" alt=\"A surfer rides a huge wave at Praia do Norte at Nazare, Portugal\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{Eastern Atlantic storm system brings near-record heat to Algeria.} A large autumn Atlantic storm system has been circulating off the coast of Morocco. It has brought a near constant west-southwesterly wind to the Azores island of Santa Maria. This is a difficult 36 kilometres per hour crosswind for the island\u2019s airport. Such persistence creates a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[100],"byline":[2474],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-29761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-africa","byline-al-jazeera"],"bylines":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29761"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29761\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29761"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=29761"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=29761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}