Yesterday one of my neighbors remarked that the heat this year was the worst in her experience in Thailand, and there were similar comments around the table at a neighborhood Thai restaurant where last night we enjoyed drinking some Singha beer and eating a light but tasty gaprow with some friends.
We know that the Songkran holidays and the peak of solar intensity (when the noon sun is directly overhead), both come along in late April, marking via astrology or astronomy, respectively the peak of the hot season in Bangkok. But this does not mean that the worst discomfort is necessarily over in late April. I surmise that a certain amount of thermal momentum and also the time of onset of clouds and rain are major factors in thermal misery and this can be seen in this graph of maximum daily temperatures, shown in red. It is evident that in especially bad years like 1983 the temperatures kept rising after the quarter point of the year in late April. In other years they are truncated earlier. The reasons for the truncation are a big factor in how bad we perceive the hot season and are worth further exploration in this blog.
We know that the Songkran holidays and the peak of solar intensity (when the noon sun is directly overhead), both come along in late April, marking via astrology or astronomy, respectively the peak of the hot season in Bangkok. But this does not mean that the worst discomfort is necessarily over in late April. I surmise that a certain amount of thermal momentum and also the time of onset of clouds and rain are major factors in thermal misery and this can be seen in this graph of maximum daily temperatures, shown in red. It is evident that in especially bad years like 1983 the temperatures kept rising after the quarter point of the year in late April. In other years they are truncated earlier. The reasons for the truncation are a big factor in how bad we perceive the hot season and are worth further exploration in this blog.
Yesterday, April 27, the sun passed directly overhead at noon (i.e. the declination of the sun and Bangkok itself being at 13.7 degrees), which yields a theoretical maximum solar noon intensity. There were no shadows at noon. Interestingly or coincidentally, the clouds are building today. According to my reckoning, if the rains don't arrive soon, the discomfort is likely to increase even further over the next couple of weeks.
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