Weather in Cyprus in November

I seem to write about the weather quite a lot. Perhaps it's because I'm British, and we Brits have a reputation for talking a lot about the weather. Perhaps because it's generally so unpredictable in the UK. Any time it's considered 'hot' (which seems to be anything over about 20C) or 'cold' (anything under about 10C) people start complaining. We're not people of extremes.

And despite the fact that we lived for two years in Colorado Springs (where the ground was pretty much frozen solid for about six months of the year, with regular snow and temperatures falling to minus 20C or even lower at times) we never really got used to anything below freezing point. That's fine now we live in Cyprus, where we don't get freezing temperatures, other than (sometimes) in the mountains.

Instead we have hot, humid summers. And we have somewhat acclimatised (or 'acclimated' as they say in the USA). 20C now feels pleasantly cool. 25C feels just about ideal. 28C is the temperature we run the air conditioners at during the summer months, and I cope with 30C. Just about. It's not until it reaches 35C, which thankfully is rare, that I feel really unpleasantly uncomfortable.

And so to November. Someone asked me to write about the Cyprus weather; and, indeed, in November it's a bit more interesting than many other months because, like UK weather in general, it's not predictable. We had pretty warm weather - up to 30C - at the end of October. Then heavy rain during the first week of November. Now we're back to blue skies with just a few fluffy white clouds, plenty of sunshine, and around 25C. I'm comfortable in a tee shirt, jeans and trainers during the daytime, with a light jacket in the afternoon and evening. At night, we're using the warm (9 tog) duvet, and it's about right.

I check the Larnaka weather regularly at the UK weather site, and also the ten-day forecast for Larnaka. It isn't always entirely accurate, but I see - for instance - that we're supposed to have some rain tonight and showers tomorrow. That's enough to prompt me to bring in the laundry, even though it's under some cover, although there's no guarantee that it will in fact rain.

I heard a rumour that the rain in the first week of November was as much as we usually get in the whole month. And that the rain in September,which we missed, was also far more than the seasonal norm. Whether or not this has made a difference to the water levels in the reservoirs remains to be seen. One week of rain will not make a whole lot of difference; there needs to be regular rain through the winter months, and a significant amount of snow in the Troodos mountains.

I'm pretty sure the situation is not as dire as it was a year ago; however we still have water restrictions in Larnaka: our mains water is on every other day, for about 12 hours. It's not a problem at all: we fill bottles with filtered mains water for drinking, and our tank is quite big enough for regular showers, dish washing, toilet flushing, and so on.