Nice weather for ducks
When I arrived in Namibia, almost exactly a year ago, I arrived to a hot spring of burnt blue skies and brittle grass. Everyone was waiting for the rain to come, but clouds that did appear were wispy and weak, no match for the sun’s laser eye.
The first rains came in late October, and then returned with a vengeance in January, battering the country with a ferocity that incited the rivers to rise up and sweep away whole towns. The rains were supposed to stop in March, leaving us refreshed and clean of dust, but they kept on, and on, until almost the end of April, when everyone was tired of being continuously wet. Rains like that haven’t been seen here for fifty years. The country blossomed. Everything, for lack of a more appropriate word, was lush. As a result of these rains, the Namib desert is knee deep in grass, and the dry valley at Sossusvlei is sporting a largeish lake, complete with cape teals and avocets. Cattle and game grew replete, reminding me of a childhood story my father used to tell me, in which the tawny, scrawny lion became ‘sleek as satin, fat as butter, and jolly as all get out’.
And then it got cold. I was so looking forward to spring, to the early, bearable heat and the flowers, the endless sunny days of September, and then the release of the rains in October. But no. The freakish weather systems that seem to be running roughshod over the world’s climate have other plans. Climate change, something I always thought (hoped) would be so gradual that it would be unnoticeable, is brazenly flaunting itself, in the outrageously hot summer the UK has just endured, and in the weather here in my corner of Africa.
Yesterday the rains began, over a month early.
September 8th, 2006 at 11:01 am
Strange here in Boston, too, with three times the normal rains in May and June. And in the US, little hurricane activity. Well past the time of last year’s Katrina, we are at Florence.
I don’t doubt global warming, or long-term climate change, but wonder whether we are simply more aware and better-informed than we were even ten years ago. Perhaps the drama was here before, but we weren’t watching? It does, regardless, affect our moods even more than our everyday activities.
September 9th, 2006 at 8:15 am
Here, too, the weather is being decidedly difficult. With most of the dams in this part of the country down to around 30%, or less, water is at a premium, people are encouraged to save as much water as possible. The rains are not due for another 6 weeks and it shows. I would give almost anything to have a proper thunderstorm rather than the almost-mist thin rain that we had on Monday (it dried almost before it hit the ground) and it continues to heat up. Whatever happens I’m sure that we’ll all be surprised before the year is out.
September 10th, 2006 at 10:15 pm
Wow. I was at Sossusvlei last June, when it was dry as a bone. I can’t even picture it with water in that cracked white pan, never mind birds.