Last Saturday (October 31st) was the earliest I have ever seen almond blossoms in Mallorca in over twenty years. By nature’s own calendar almond trees do not develop their buds until middle to late December, but I have seen blossoms as early as the beginning of December or, occasionally, even by the middle of November. But this, the end of October, is quite unbelievable. Nature must be confused somehow, at least here in the Balearic islands.

The time of day when I spotted the almond blossoms a few days ago was not conducive for a decent photograph, so I decided to go back there yesterday. And nearby I found a couple of almond trees that were also displaying their pale blossoms. The tree seen earlier thus was not a freak appearance but part of a whole campaign of early Spring symptoms. The problem is that we are still some seven weeks away from Winter. What do these trees think?

Over the last three years since I have been doing this Mallorca photo blog, I have observed that there were quite a number of irregularities to the local weather pattern. But this latest one surely counts as the most astonishing upsets in weather predictability.

The photo was taken near Felanitx, Mallorca, Baleares, Spain. The date: November 2nd, 2009. The time was 12:12:13.