Extreme weather - Guatemala Video Transcripts
Video 1 Transcript
Dolores Paten, it rains really, really hard there. But it's funny because you'll leave the house in the morning and you'll think, oh, it's, you know, it's perfectly fine, you know, good solid 80 degrees. There's not a cloud in the sky, so you leave without a jacket, right? And then, not even joking, three hours later, you'll come back and there will be storm clouds and there will be thunder and lightning everywhere you go, right? So one time we were walking, right? Just completely short-sleeved shirt. Then it starts pouring, pouring, pouring. It was the hardest rain I've ever seen in my whole entire life. And we were staying on one hill and we looked out and all of a sudden at that moment, some lightning struck at the other hill, luckily, and we were exactly at the same height. So it really was a miracle that we weren't struck and that the other hill was, but that's just kind of some of the normal stuff that you'll see there.
Video 2 Transcript
So in Guatemala, there's not really seasons, summer, winter, spring, and fall. There's a rainy season and a dry season. The rainy season is during the summer months, what we know in the United States as the summer months. And when it rains, it rains hard sometimes. In my last area, I was in a little village called Nimsitu and Patulu. And in this little village, sometimes it would just rain all day. And because it was up in the mountains, the thunder was a lot stronger. I remember one time my companion and I went out and we could barely see in front of us. We were in a giant, giant thunderstorm. It was just pouring rain. I didn't have my coat. I was soaked to the bone. And every time lightning struck, we got scared because it was so close to us. The thunderstorms there do get really, really crazy.
Video 3 Transcript
As you probably already know, it rains a lot. If you're over in the Patan area, the Polochic area, Salama, those are some areas that it's going to be really hot a lot of the time. If you're over in Koban, it also can get pretty warm, but during winter months like November, December, January, it's pretty chilly. It rains a lot. You're going to be wanting some more sweaters or cardigans like this one that I'm wearing right now. In other areas there's going to be flash floods. You always want to have an umbrella. There were lots of days where I would just wear rain boots, which I would suggest definitely just buy those there. They're way better equipped for the weather there. You'll just be walking along and it'll just start raining out of the blue. Always have your umbrella, maybe a raincoat. You might be fine with just your umbrella, but the weather's awesome. It's beautiful. It makes it really green and fun.
Video 4 Transcript
It definitely rains a lot in Guatemala. The weather is kind of crazy and I expected it to be really warm all the time, all year round, and I ended up using my rain boots a lot more than I thought I would. I always had an umbrella with me. Sometimes it would be random. We'd just be walking and it'd start raining, but it kind of has periods and seasons. The typical winter seasons are like their rainy season and then their summer is really pretty warm, but it does rain a lot.
Video 5 Transcript
Guatemala has some crazy weather. But what I wasn't expecting was how much it rains. So they have a rainy season and a dry season. And during the rainy season, it's like May to October, depending on where you're at. My one area, it was 3pm to 8pm, it would rain every day, but it would pour. And so my bags were always soaking wet. I was always soaking wet. We really learned how to enjoy the rain. But also it's super hot at the same time and humid. So that was something I wasn't expecting. But it's something that I really miss. So every time there's a thunderstorm or something here in Utah like that, I just think of Guatemala.
Video 6 Transcript
So in many, many of the places where I served, it was actually pretty hot. I served on the coast, super hot, like just humid, not too much that you would like pass out, but man it got hot. So you have to drink a lot of water, just a lot, a lot of water all day long. But you have to be careful where you drink the water from, but in other parts, and it, and it rains like crazy. So make sure you have good shoes and several good shoes because you got to let one dry out during the day and then you got to wear the other one because it's just always raining in certain parts and you just get drenched, just completely and utterly drenched. Umbrellas sometimes work, jackets sometimes work, but usually you just get drenched.
Video 7 Transcript
So, one thing about Guatemala is the rain. There's a ton of rain. In fact, I was in one area where it rained so much, and I think only about a minute, that it created a giant lake where all the traffic was supposed to be going to. So, we were stuck in a bus for about one or two hours because all the traffic could literally not pass this giant lake that had formed in the middle of the road. A normal car, it would go over their engine, so it would ruin the car. And, well, we were in a bus, so we eventually got through the lake, but a lot of the cars, I'm sure, were there a lot longer than we were. Yeah, it rains, thunder, lightning all the time during the rainy season, which is from May-ish to November-ish. That's when it rains a lot.
Video 8 Transcript
So I served in Guatemala. It rains pretty hard. One of the areas I was in, it was typically pretty dry. It didn't actually rain very much, but one day it rained so strongly that the roads flooded. And because the town wasn't used to so much rain, they had a very poor irrigation system. And it was very low geographically, and so the water probably went up to about our stomachs. And one lady, while we were tracking through the rain, kind of for fun, she was panicked because she didn't know how to drive and the water was actually getting in through her car doors. And so she had us drive her car up to a higher point of the ground. But that was pretty fun. There were a bunch of kids swimming around and diving into the street full of water.
