Forecasting Kitsap

My family has been hosting a foreign exchange student named John Mhando from Tanzania (southeast Africa) for about 7 months now. When I first met him in late August the very first thing I asked him was: “Have you ever seen snow before?” (I try really hard not to talk about weather when introducing myself to people, but I couldn’t resist!)

He looked at me with a puzzled expression on his face, thought a moment and said: “Snow? A little bit on the top of Mount Kilimanjaro…” (He lives in a village near the base of the mountain)

“Have you ever seen it fall?” I asked. He shook his head no. I was absolutely stunned. Until then I thought EVERYONE had experienced a snowfall, but to my astonishment he had never seen it before. In fact, one night when we were watching the movie “Harry Potter”, he saw a scene where it was snowing and he raced up to the DVD player and paused it, observing the snowy picture. He then looked at me and asked, “Is that snow?”

So, you can imagine when we had our first snowfall on December 13th, 2008 John was quite excited. I still jump up and down like an 8 year old boy when it snows, but John’s reaction was different. He just stood outside with his T-shirt on and watched the snowflakes fall. When they would hit his bare arm he’d watch them, amazed at their magical dissolving power. Among many other things John has taught me to appreciate while he’s stayed with us, that moment made me appreciate snow a little bit more.

Here’s a hilarious picture of him sledding down the hill in our backyard this past December. He was taking one of our dogs for a ride, but she bailed out early:

Since then I have asked him what his impression of Washington weather is and he absolutely loves it. He told me,

“I really love the snow. It doesn’t rain as much here as it does in Tanzania, but I like the clouds and rain.” Despite the string of abnormally long snow days this winter, it has been a relatively dry season so I suppose I can’t blame John for thinking it is drier here than it really is. But then again, he lives at the base of Mount Kilimanjaro and it averages 40.4” of rain a year—10 inches more than Seattle.

Tanzania’s climate is quite warm also. Winter time (May-August), high temperatures run in the mid to upper 70s where summer time is a bit warmer with highs running in the 80s to low 90s—a bit too warm for me (I’m “cold blooded” which is why I love it here!)

John leaves us in June and so far the visit has been pleasant and I am excited about the connections I now have to southeast Africa! I’ll have to take a trip there sometime (after I take a trip to Mount Rainier! )

John is on the Central Kitsap Boys Varsity soccer team and they are playing Lincoln High School this evening so I have to get going, but I will talk about our weather in greater detail tomorrow as well as the “Long Range Thoughts”. Let me just say that winter MAY not be done if we are to believe the latest forecast models as snow levels look to plunge Monday-Wednesday. I’ll wait one more day before I say anything more. For now, refer to the 7 Day Forecast.

Have a great evening and stay dry! There was a lot more rain than expected today, but the weekend doesn’t look too bad

Matthew Leach

Kitsap Weather

7 DAY FORECAST

Ok, I’ll stop messing around. The above forecast is the next 7 days for Kilimanjaro, Tanzania. OUR weather forecast is below…

7 DAY FORECAST (For Kitsap County!)