When the rains don't follow the calendar
A 'normal' season can still catch farmers off guard. New analysis of five years of Kisumu rainfall data uncovers the hidden variability behind the averages, reinforcing T-CSIA's irrigation advisory work under the iSPARK project.
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When the rains don't follow the calendar
A 'normal' season can still catch farmers off guard. New analysis of five years of Kisumu rainfall data uncovers the hidden variability behind the averages, reinforcing T-CSIA's irrigation advisory work under the iSPARK project.
Five years of monthly rainfall data for Kisumu look mostly like noise with sharp shifts and no clean trend. But underneath that noise are real, documented events, such as specific months when rain came late, stopped early, or fell in the wrong week for a crop that needed it on time. For farmers, that gap between "normal" and "what actually happens" is the difference between a good season and a lost one. A month that looks safe on paper, because it's usually wet, can still fail without warning, and by the time it's obvious something's wrong, the planting window has already closed.
This analysis draws on five years (2018–2022) of monthly Kisumu rainfall estimates from Climate Hazards Center InfraRed Precipitation with Station (CHIRPS), a satellite-and-station rainfall product. Using time-series methods, the data is explored to tell a real climate signal apart from ordinary noise.