The Crazy Weather of Kazakhstan

December 3, 2008

I do not think that Al Gore has ever visited Kazakhstan, but in November we have had enough crazy weather to definitively prove his global warming thesis. I was struck at the intensity and implausibility of the weather witnessed. Furthermore, the speed at which the weather transitioned from one type to another was incredible, often taking only one day or even a couple of hours. The first week was five days of heavy, sometimes even torrential rain. This would be nothing unusual if Kyzylorda was not located in the desert/steppe of Kazakhstan, but I bet that we got our due of rain for an entire year. The following week brought a dense cold fog in the mornings that slowly disappeared in the mid to late afternoon. I figure that this could have been the result of the warm afternoon sun sucking water up off of the river that was then trapped near the earth as the temperature quickly dropped at sundown. The fog was so thick that I thought I was walking through a humidfier, and it was sometimes hard to breathe. In a city so flat that I can almost see my school from my apartment two miles away I could barely see five feet in front of me. Next came the Indian summer. When I went to work in the morning it had been in the high 30’s Farenhiet, but by the time I walked back to my house for lunch it had gotten up the high 50’s. As I mentioned before these weather patterns moved in with astounding speed, but the November heat week developed the fastest.. I have to admit that I was so caught off guard that I first thought I had caught a cold and had a fever. This “heat wave” has persisted even into the first week of December with no end in site. It looks like one of the coldest winters on record will be followed by one of the warmest.