Some notes on weather

Greetings, all. I'm once again holding down the fort by myself this week, as Josh is in Japan for some martial arts goodness. (No, he's not evil: I had the option to go with him, and decided not to, because he'll be going again later in the year and I want to wait for better weather!)

On the subject of weather, I thought I'd tell you a little bit about weather here in Thailand.

The seasonality has so far been (and will continue to be, I think) the hardest thing to get used to. I miss cool weather! Thailand has essentially three seasons, instead of four: 1) a cool season, November to early February; 2) a hot season, February to May; and 2) a rainy season, the rest of the year (May to November). The cool season only gets to what we would call "springlike" weather in the US, and often hotter than that, but the humidity is more manageable. We arrived at the end of the cool season, in February. The hot season has little rain and can be very uncomfortable, especially around mid-April-- which is why the Thai New Year, Songkran (which we've mentioned before) features so many water fights!

The rains started right after Songkran this year-- the day we got back from Chiang Mai, in fact. This is pretty early, which many people are commenting on as a sign of global temperature change. There was also more rain during the cool and hot seasons than this area is used to.

Right now, the temperatures during the day have varied between really hot and more comfortable (see Weather Underground for more details if interested-- the current temp at the airport is listed at 88 F, but I was just outside and it actually felt cooler than that), but at least one major rainstorm a day (and often two) is par for the course, often in early afternoon. I've also noticed a lot of lightning late at night, for the past couple of nights. (We've had a lot of problems with electricity in our neighborhood, too, once because the driving rain got into one of the transformers-- BOOM!-- but they are pretty speedy about fixing it.)

Towards August and September, the rain will really pick up, we are told, and we also may need to schedule our activities around some flooding! Bangkok is a very low-lying city (and is sinking) and is built over an old network of canals, so any sudden influx of water can seriously back-up the storm drain system. We are told to be prepared to wear flipflops and roll up our pant legs if necessary, as some areas can get up to 1.5 feet of water for a short time before it drains away. Our neighborhood is known for floods like this: along the major streets along Sukhumvit (and elsewhere in the city), shops often either have a raised entrance, or a low wall between the street and the shop door to block the water. Just as we arrived in Thailand, they were doing some work on the sewer systems along Soi 11 to prevent this happening in the future-- and some neighbors have told us that it seems to be working so far, since we haven't seen really deep water yet. Time will tell, I guess!

All in all, although I really miss US spring weather, it's not so bad right now. Many people do get their "fix" by using the summer as the time to travel back to the States or to cooler climates. Come fall, I know I'll really need a break!