Weather

I still get occasional questions about the weather here so I thought I’d do a more in-depth explanation!

First things first: It’s really hot here all the time. When I first stepped off the plane in Guyana I remember being hit by a wall of hot air so humid I felt like I could take a bite out of it. Although my body has definitely adjusted to the heat (which I think is a totally amazing process!) I still find some mid-afternoons to be miserably hot and I always welcome the cooler night air. During my early days here I felt like I needed to be glued to a fan but now I feel comfortable in the evenings and even cover up sometimes to sleep!

What most Americans don’t understand is that we don’t have 4 seasons here. Where I live is about 5°N (turns out that not all of South America is in the southern hemisphere!) so the length of day is about the same year round and the temperature is a fairly constant 82°F. This sounds like a really nice temperature but with the 80% humidity and sun beating down it gets pretty hot. I’m lucky to live right on the coast where we get great breeze off the ocean and I’ve grown a great appreciation for that cool wind when I’m dripping in sweat.

We do have 2 seasons during the year: rainy and dry. The main rainy season runs from May-early July and another smaller rainy season is in December-January. Climate change is really apparent here though and many farmers tell me that it’s hard to predict when the bulk of the rain will fall (which gets some rice farmers into a real pickle). Rainy season is nice because it cools everything down at night and brings drinking water for most people, but it also increases the humidity and makes it nearly impossible to get anything to dry (aka it’s a real gamble to put my clothes on the line after washing). We also seem to get more mosquitos in rainy season but I’ll have to make a whole other Bugs Blog cause I have a lot to say about those critters… When it rains the sky busts open and pours for about 10 minutes then stops for a few hours before starting again. It’s hard to tell when the rain will start coming down so I always walk with my umbrella (which I also use for shade during the hottest parts of the day) and have gotten soaked a few times…

Only in Guyana can a grown woman walk around with a kitten and puppy umbrella…

That’s about all I can say about weather. No one talks about the forecast here like they do on the news in the US because it’s always basically the same (and the weather reports I can find always seem to be inaccurate). All you really need to know is that it’s hot and humid and my moments spent in A/C are very treasured!

Enjoying a cold drink by the pool on my last trip to the capital!

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