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What to expect in NOVEMBER 2004

Statistics

	Average temperature 23.8 C Average rainfall 52.8 mm Cloud cover 4.8/10 Humidity 77 % Rainy days 5.6 Sunshine 234 hrs.

YEAH!!!! We've made it through to the cool season, the rains dwindling and the winds, bless them, blowing straight out of the heart of China, pushing the warm, wet, steamy air back where it belongs, over the Indian Ocean. Long may it remain there! (I'm speaking here of course, not as a farmer, but a tio-loving, itchy-footed farang who can't get enough trips out into the boonies).

What's happened (we hope) is that monsoon pattern has reliably done its thing, the tilt of the earth away from the sun in the northern hemisphere reducing exposure to the sun's rays, and a cooling process occurring, particularly of the large land masses away from the seas' moderating effects. The air over the land consequently becomes denser, giving atmospheric highs that push the warmer air outwards, in our case the NE monsoon winds taking the place of their rivals, those of the SW monsoon. The critical atmospheric moment is likely to have happened in mid-October, when what the meteorological cognoscenti call the ICZ - the Inter-tropical Convergence Zone (the meeting area of the southern and northern air masses) - passes our part of the continent, some time in January reaching as far south as northern Australia, and then beginning its journey back.

Of course, reliability isn't what has ever characterised weather events, particularly on a day-to-day basis, and even in this climate we can expect daily (and longer) changes. This month, for example, though the statistics show a considerable drop in temperature, cloud cover and precipitation, and an increase of sunny days, we can still have the odd tropical storm growling in from Vietnam and over the Northeast, dumping extremely heavy falls of rain onto Chiang Mai and environs for a couple or more days - so you've been warned. If you're tripping into the back-blocks, keep an eye on the latest forecasts and don't get caught out, like your weatherman did some years back. He took his inamorata on a trail-bike trip round to Mae Hong Son - this in the days before the road had been surfaced - and when a severe storm turned the track into porridge, spent a lot of time that could have been better occupied - much better occupied - pushing his bike through quagmires…

This is also the beginning of a healthier time of year, but you should still try to keep the mozzies off, dengue fever carried by the day-time family and malaria those of the evening, night and early morning. The latter disease (the potentially-fatal falsiparum variety) is almost impossible to catch down here in the city, but it's certainly lurking in the forests and mountains, especially up near the Burmese border, so you should spend your nights under mosquito nets in those areas, if you can. If you have any doubts about your condition, get a check on returning to the city. Malaria is easy to detect and relatively easy to suppress, if diagnosed early.