A rain with no thunder

The weather in the past four days has been very nice: it has been raining! And with it, the weather is so cool and nice, despite it being wet. But I like it. Like it better than the sunny weather.

Anyway, this rain only reinforces what I've been telling people - those who bother to listen to me - that the most prolonged rainy spells happen when there is no thunder or lightning. Take, for example, these past few days. Have you heard any thunder? Seen any lightning? No? Well, that's what's happen when thunder and lightning do not follow a rain storm. It just goes on and on.

But when you have a thunderstorm, chances are, the storm would be over in a matter of time. Possibly one hour, two hours, sometimes even shorter.

So for the past few days, it has been just drizzles. Constant drizzles. Persistent drizzles. Drizzles that wet the roads but not causing any real congestion to the roads and traffic. But enough to make you wet if you are so foolhardy to want to step outdoors without an umbrella.

To many people, this present rainy period has lasted four days already since the 20th of the month but to me, the continuous rainfall only manifested itself in the morning of the 21st. At about 6.30a.m. that day, I had gone outdoors to look upwards into the dawn sky as I wanted to look at the planet Jupiter. I had noticed Jupiter since about three or four days earlier when I was tracking the waning moon but I couldn't see the planet on the 20th or the 21st.

In fact, on the 21st, instead of the planet, I noticed that the sky had a pinkish hue. I had then messaged a friend in Kuala Lumpur that it looked like impending rain. By daylight, I could see that the sky was indeed grey. Uniformly grey without any isolated patches of blue. And then the showers began. They weren't heavy but as I told my friend, it would still make anyone wet. However, by six o'clock in the afternoon, it had stopped.

That night, the wind began blowing and I commented that I could hear it rustling the leaves outside the house. Cool night, as a result. Then after three o'clock on the 22nd, the rain began. Ever so lightly. And it became heavier after five o'clock. My thermometer registered a low of 23.5 Celsius and a high of 26 Celsius for the day. At daybreak, I stepped outside the house and noticed a thick cloud cover at the Bukit Mertajam hill in Cherok Tokun.

My observation on the 22nd afternoon was that it was still wet but with a very light rainfall only. "BM hill covered with mist," I informed my friend. No let-up in the rain as afternoon turned to night.

And today, it was still drip-dropping with rain at about 6.30a.m. The temperature recorded by my thermometer was a low of 23.5 Celsius and a high of 24.5 Celsius, the smallest temperature range that I've ever experienced in Penang for quite some time. It is only now at three o'clock in the afternoon that the rain has stopped. But for how long, I wouldn't know.

UPDATE (24 Dec 2014): The respite was brief. The rain came back again soon after I completed this post and for the better part of the late afternoon, it was intermittent. But the drizzles went on into the night and well into early this morning. I spent the early hours listening to the dripping of rain water on the metal awnings. The temperature recorded over the last 24 hours was a low of 23.5 Celsius and a high of 24 Celsius. So the daytime temperature wasn't that much different from the night-time.