Sunday, June 8, 2008

Mongolian Weather

Having grown up and spent pretty much my entire life in Canada, weather was pretty consistent in my experience. I could never have imagined the insane weather patterns of a country like Mongolia. We have weather here that defies logic. To illustrate my point, here are some examples.

1. On a given day, the difference between the high and low temperatures can be in excess of 30 degree. I can wake up at 6:30 and we will have fairly chilly -5 (the coldest part of the day is around 7 am). by the warmest part of the day (4 or 5 pm) the temperature can be as high as 25-30 degrees.

2. During the winter, it was not uncommon to look at the forecast on weather.com or theweathernetwork.com and see that the day's weather was listed as "smoke". This is not from forest fires, but from the gers. Seriously? Smoke? Does that even count as weather?

3. A couple weeks ago, we experienced 32 degrees on Sunday. On Monday, we had snow squalls all day long.

4. Last night, in what was the most bizarre weather I've ever seen, we experienced a combination of 2 different storms at the exact same time. All day it had been sunny and well over 30 degrees (which isn't so bad since we get little to no humidity). Suddenly, at 9:30 the skies turned the darkest black (the sun hadn't quite set yet), and a massive storm came through. Sand/dust storms are not particularly uncommon as anyone in Korea, Northern China and Mongolia will attest to. What was odd about this dust storm was that we also got a rain storm at the same time. As a result, it turned into a mudstorm. Seriously. Mud fell from the sky. After a day with no wind, the storm also brought winds of greater than 80 km/h.

A dust storm as seen from our school. You would normally have a view of the entire city without the dust. Instead, you can barely see 60m away.

No comments: