Desert Tropics

The title tells you everything about what the climate of Nigeria is like at certain times of the year. Dry Season: desert. Wet Season: tropical. Here is why:

We're getting into the Dry Season, as you should know by now (if you aren't just now reading this blog, or was sent to here by Pingy or Alphainventions), and it's a crazy clash of temperature! In the night, it becomes bone chilling cold. I've had to use a thick sleeping bag to cover myself these days when I go to sleep. And my family lives on the equator! A little unbeleivable, right? In the daytime, though, you try to wear the least heat-holding clothing as possible, because it gets HOT, man. I mean like put an egg on the pavement and it'll cook kinda hot. It is the norm to be covered in sweat by about 11:00 in the morning. And then, you're hair and skin and everything around you will get dry and dusty 24/7. Day and night. Why is this? Well, imagine Dry Season as the exact opposite of Winter. Instead of it becoming really cold, it gets really hot. Clouds in the sky all the time, not a cloud in sight. What else does that description sound like? Good class, a desert. It's like Nigeria gets transformed into the Sahara for a certain time in the year. The reason why it gets cold at night and hot in the day is because there are no clouds to trap the heat. So, unlike in rainy season when it's almost always rainy and overcast, there's not a cloud in the sky right now. Seriously, right now. I'm looking out the window and it's just blue. I don't know why that exactly is, but I do know that the cloudless sky lets the heat escape when it is night and the sun isn't warming our side of the planet. When it becomes daytime, though, there are no clouds to block the sun, therefore making the place a furnace. A dry, dusty, furnace. Oh yeah, I almost forgot...it's dusty because dust from the Sahara blows in from the north. So we get a layer of red dust on everything. And since no rain...well, as you can tell, it can get pretty red around here.

Then, there's Rainy Season. Rainy Season is a whole different matter. Imagine Rainy Season like Spring, except with a lot more rain, and the rain much, MUCH more violent. When I mean violent, it sounds like a hundred machine guns are shooting simultaneously at a giant echoey gong. And that's just the rain. When the thunder comes....you'd think that you're in Hurricane Racket. If you go outside, it really looks like a hurricane, with palm trees bending over and the whole world splitting apart. It's awesome! And pretty frightening at some times, but you can live through those. Rainy Season is what you'd imagine those pretty islands on tourism brochures to look like: warm sun, nice breezes, and plenty of fruit. Plenty of sweet, plump, fruit. And the rain washes away all of the dust from Dry Season. And then when Dry Season comes again, it drys up all the gross mud the Rainy Season makes. They're pretty much in perfect harmony.

Signing off,
The Traveler

Signing off again because he forgot to on his previous post and he's trying to make up for it,
The Traveler