Monday, October 15, 2007

The Rainy Season in Ruhiira

So we're right in the middle of the rainy season here in Ruhiira... it's beautifully green and full of life. Just thought everyone might like to see what it's like, from a meteorologist's point of view!

Since we're just a bit south of the equator, the prevailing wind is East-Southeast. (I was turned around for the first week or so here because of that!) The mornings are usually pretty clear, or with a few high clouds, and bigger clouds usually start building all around us by around noon due to the heating of the day. Ruhiira and the surrounding area is up on a bit of a ridge, about 1000ft higher than the surrounding plains of northern Tanzania. This also helps form some of the rain clouds as the air is forced upward towards Ruhiira. During these weeks of middle October - about the peak of the rainy season - we have about a 50/50 chance every day. If the rain comes, it's just like a summer thunderstorm in the US... the clouds start getting dark, the wind picks up, and it rains pretty hard for between 10min and 90min, maybe 0.1in to 1.5in. Pretty exciting! Here's some pictures showing the progression of a storm... and some of the cool weather things we've seen here so far!

Clouds building, heading NW toward the equator!





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3 comments:

Les said...

Do you have an umbrella! Looks pretty wet! We had one of those here Friday and Saturday with thunder and lightning for over 12 hours!

Jenn said...

Guess what...they have a new series that started last night on the Discovery Channel called "Storm Chasers." We watched it and the very first episode was in Kansas! It made us think of you, Eric! http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/storm-chasers/storm-chasers.html

Love you!

Patrick & Jenn

Janet said...

That's my son...the weather man!
I loved the photos...looks like a good ole' Kansas storm.
thanks for the great blog!