How’s Africa? – The Rainy Season

A few weeks ago I posted about the dry season here in Africa. This last dry season was long and very dry. Longer than normal, though not as long as they had last year when there was a severe drought and famine. 

Each season has its benefits. Dry season? The weather is predictable. It will be sunny and hot every day. It’s often windy. Sometimes it get cloudy in the afternoon because of the heating of the day, but it doesn’t rain. It gets very cool at night because there is no cloud cover to trap in the warm air.

Rainy season is not so predictable, though you do get to be pretty good at guessing the weather, even without a meteorologist. 

The weather gradually eases from one season to another. First, you get a surprise shower that pops up in the afternoon. It doesn’t rain long, barely enough to settle the dust or wet the ground. Sometimes it doesn’t even rain. The clouds will thicken and threaten it imminently, but it blows over.

Then, some evening as you sit relaxing before bed, you hear light sprinkles outside. It doesn’t rain long, but this is usually a lighter soaking rain that jump-starts the grass and plants. You start to notice that the grass needs to be cut, even though you don’t think you’ve gotten much rain.

Next, you get days when you wake in the morning to oppressive humidity — for here anyway. It’s not actually that high but after weeks of dry season low humidity, it feels like breathing under a wet blanket. Most days like this start out sunny, heat quickly, then a pressure system builds up and storms form. Some of these storms can be severe. 

Finally, the season settles in and you get rain, if not every day, the several days a week. Some days you wake to rain showers that last most of the day. Other times, the day starts off sunny but showers form in the afternoon. 

The rainy season tapers back into the dry season in the reverse of this pattern until the rain just stops for a couple months. 

I love the cool rainy days of the rainy season. I love how green everything gets.

I don’t love all the mud, but it’s a nice change from the dust of the dry season. It’s a pain to get clothes dry some days. Those cloudy cool days, even if it isn’t raining, clothes can hang out all day and still not get dry. We just have to follow our version of the adage “Hang laundry while the sun shines.”