Two Rains: Weather and Its Effects on Daily Life, and Talking About Conditions and Consequences

1Reading: Two Rains

A feature written for this lesson. Facts on seasons and the 2023 floods are sourced in the credits.

1 Ask an older farmer when something happened, and she may answer not with a month but with a season: "in Itumba, the year the beans failed". Rwanda's year turns on two rains. The long rains, Itumba, fall from March to May; the long dry season, Impeshyi, follows from June to August; the short rains, Umuhindo, run from September to December; and January and February bring Urugaryi, a shorter, drier spell.

2 Why two rainy seasons rather than one? The answer lies in a belt of rising air and heavy cloud near the equator, the Intertropical Convergence Zone. It follows the sun north and south during the year, and so it crosses the region twice: once on the way north, bringing the long rains, and once on the way back, bringing the short ones. Hills, valleys and large lakes then make the pattern uneven, so that one district may be soaked while its neighbour waits for rain.

3 The rains set the calendar of daily life. Farmers plant as each rainy season begins, and a late start can mean a thin harvest and higher prices in the market months later. In the rainy season, students on steep paths leave home earlier, builders cover their bricks, moto riders keep a raincoat under the seat, and the rivers that feed hydroelectric stations rise. In the long dry season, dust replaces mud, water sources shrink, and some families walk further for water.

4 Sometimes the weather does more than inconvenience. On 2 and 3 May 2023, exceptionally heavy rain caused floods and landslides, hardest in the Western and Northern Provinces, that killed more than 130 people and destroyed thousands of homes. Steep slopes, saturated soil and houses built close to rivers turned a weather event into a disaster.

5 Scientists expect a warming climate to make heavy downpours more intense in many parts of the world. That does not mean every season will be wetter; it means that the gap between too little and too much may widen. For a country where so much depends on the timing of two rains, that is not a distant problem.

6 This is why the weather forecast, once a minute of filler before the news, has become a daily tool. Farmers use seasonal forecasts to choose when to plant; district officials use warnings to move families from risky areas. The forecast cannot stop the rain. It can give people time.

2The rhythm of the year

3Comprehension

1. Name the four seasons and their months, according to paragraph 1.
2. Explain, in your own words, why Rwanda has two rainy seasons.
3. Why might two neighbouring districts receive very different rainfall?
4. Give four ways in which the rainy season changes daily life (paragraph 3).
5. According to paragraph 4, what three conditions turned heavy rain into a disaster in May 2023?
6. What does the writer mean by "the gap between too little and too much may widen"?
7. Explain the last two sentences of the feature.
8. Distinguish weather from climate, giving one example of each from the text.

4Speaking: weather conditions and their effects

Prepare a one-minute talk for a community radio slot called "Weather and You". Describe a weather condition, explain its causes or warning signs, describe its effects, and end with practical advice.