Hot Days and Prayers for Japan

December 25th, 2004. Christmas Day. We met friends at Kamala Beach in Phuket. Kids played happily on the sand. We toasted another good year. My wife was 9 months pregnant with our son. The weather was perfect. Blue skies, everyone happy. The next day, it happened. I thank all the Gods in the world that "it" did not happen the day before while we were at the beach. Kamala was hit pretty hard. How fast can a 9 months old woman run? Would we and our friends have found our kids who were playing on the beach? We did not see anything next day. Safe at home near Phuket Town, a long way from the beaches. And pretty sure I'd never see another day like it. I have written several times on the blog about my tsunami memories.

If you are looking for the latest Phuket weather - sorry for not updating for over a week. Was going to update on Friday, but ended up glued to the internet, doing lots of ReTweeting as the bad news got worse. And it's still getting worse. The huge earthquake offshore Japan on Friday caused a tsunami. A big one. I think the final "death toll" (I hate that phrase) will be massive. Everyone should say a prayer in whatever language you speak to whatever god you believe in.

So.. Phuket weather - the last few days have been HOT. Saturday was quite cloudy, but the last 2 days all blue skies and very warm. I love aircon! People have been coming into our dive shop and sighing with relief. Many of the forecasts you can find online at this time of year are inaccurate. They tend to show a little thunderstorm symbol, which looks to people like it's really bad weather every day. The reality is - sure, there might be a thunderstorm somewhere in the 500+ square kilometers of Phuket. I can see distant lightening tonight from our house, but it's dry as a bone here. We had a couple of evening thunderstorms last week on Tuesday and Wednesday, with a total of over 50mm of rain those 2 nights but no rain since then. You get some rain in the hot season, but on average March is the 4th driest month of the year after February, January and December in that order. And April, also hot with occasional thunder, is in 5th place. It's a good time to be here in Phuket!