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Cold hours (less than 7ºC) are a meteorological parameter that is used to measure the cold that fruit trees need during the winter rest period to have good sprouting and flowering.
These last days of winter, in the plain of the Pla d'Urgell region, frost and fog are favorable protagonists for fruit trees.
I captured this photograph that we see in La Vanguardia's Readers' Photos in a pear orchard surrounded by fog and cold in Ivars d'Urgell.
The climate of Pla d'Urgell is Mediterranean with a lowland continental tendency. The flat topography and small dimensions mean that the entire region has the same type of climate.
The winters are cold and long and the summers are hot and short. There are strong seasonal and daily thermal oscillations.
Fog forms often, from late autumn and throughout winter. Sometimes they dissolve by mid-morning or afternoon, but sometimes they last for days at a time or more than a week.
If the temperature drops below zero and there is fog, frost forms on the ground and on the plants, like these days. Precipitation is scarce, especially in this current drought dynamic in Catalonia.
