Nicaragua: Washed the spider out

For today's ever-so-captivating blog topic, let's turn to an obsession among meteorologists and Minnesotan farmers alike: Means of measuring the weather. 

Thanks to advances in technology one can easily find out the predicted high and low temperature of the day with details on the hour and even minute. Humidity, wind, UV index, pressure, dewpoint, precipitation, minute of sunrise and sunset...this information is readily available for anybody who cares to know. Often times we complain that the weatherman is never right; however, his daily reports will forever remain popular topics of conversation (and he is actually right most of the time despite our complaints or wishes).

In places which experience a change of season four times a year, talking about the weather is especially second-nature. Snowstorms, tornadoes, sunny days, and rain showers have a significant affect on our daily plans (and moods). Our relationship with the weather is of the love-hate nature.

In Nicaragua, we can always count on the sun to shine and the rain to fall, we just never really know when or to what degree. Our conversations in my community go something like this:  

Question: So, how hot is it?

Answer: Really hot.

Question: How much rain did we get? 

Answer: A lot of rain. 

And that, my friends, is as simple and complex as it gets. Only until recently did it dawn on me that we don't use obsessive measuring mechanisms here when referring to the weather. The banks do not have digital signs which flash back and forth between the time and current outdoor temperature. Back home I could always count on my dad to tell me how much rain fell on a given summer's night down to the exact tenth of an inch thanks to the rain gauge in our garden. I have yet to see a rain gauge in Nicaragua, and that seems ridiculously silly. How could I live in a place which claims to see the most rainfall of anywhere on the planet yet not have any way to measure that? It's time to get to the bottom of this and see if that claim is fact or fiction. I first need to find or make myself a rain gauge, and then the weather-measuring obsession will continue. 

And if you are curious, at the completion of this post I am sitting in a comfortable 84F climate, forecast of scattered T-storms, 89% humidity, the wind is East at 5 mph, UV index is 8, and the past 24-hour precipitation claims to be N/A. At least, that is what The Weather Channel website tells me.