"And Dr. Macphail watched the rain. It was beginning to get on his nerves. It was not like our soft English rain that drops gently on the earth; it was unmerciful and somehow terrible; you felt in it the malignancy of the primitive powers of nature. It did not pour, it flowed. It was like a deluge from heaven, and it rattled on the roof of corrugated iron with a steady persistence that was maddening. It seemed to have a fury of its own."- From Rain by W. Somerset Maugham
So I've been noticing a lot of people on the mainland complaining about how much it's been raining there lately. Allow me to show you what real rain looks like¹
Note that this clip is from last April, which is why everything in Pago looks relatively nice and not all tsunami-ravaged. I would have uploaded a higher-quality version, but it would have taken about 33 hours. Really. So try to imagine it coming down in sheets when I'm facing the mountain.
For most of this week there was a large trough over the island, which means there were some really big barnyard animals feeding here. And they were slobbering constatnly, so there were almost nonstop heavy rains overhead. Today we didn't have to worry about the trough...because we had a brush with Tropical Cyclone² Nisha. What fun we're having here!
¹As opposed to imaginary rain, which is what the rest of the world has.
²Really a hurricane, pretty much
