The Weather Notebook: Afghanistan

Afghanistan
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Since recent history has plunged the US into war with the Taliban in Afghanistan, suddenly everything about this central Asian country matters a great deal - including its climate.

Hi, I'm Bryan Yeaton and this is the Weather Notebook.

"Morale-destroying" is how one historian described Afghanistan's weather in a study of the failed Russian invasion. And yet the country has also been called "a meteorologist's heaven" for its fascinating climatic diversity.

Mountainous over much of its terrain and landlocked, Afghanistan is subject to harsh swings between torrid summers and frigid winters as well as fierce regional winds. In the winter, arctic blasts from Russia bring occasional heavy snow to the northern mountains and frequently close Salang Pass, the sole north-south truck route through the mountains. Summer poses its own meteorological challenges. Between July and September the Indian monsoon brushes the eastern mountains of the Hindu Kush with high humidity and recurring showers. While the fabled summertime "winds of 120 days," fueled by pressure differences between north and south, howl through the desert southwest. Extremes are impressive in a country smaller than Texas: temperatures as high as 120 F and as low as -51 have been recorded.

Typically arid or semi-arid, Afghanistan is in the grip of a disastrous three-year drought that has caused almost complete crop failure in some areas. For the first time in living memory, the Helmand River dried up, and dust storms of biblical proportions have raged through the south.

It's enough to say that weather and geography have long conspired to make Afghanistan an exceedingly difficult place to survive.

Our program is produced by the Mount Washington observatory. It is supported in part by the National Science Foundation.